Exorcism and Enlightenment Johann Joseph Gassner and The Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (The Terry Lectures Series) by H. C. Erik Midelfort

the terry lectures
EXORCISM AND ENLIGHTENMENT

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H. C. ERIK MIDELFORT
Exorcism and Enlightenment

Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of
Eighteenth-Century Germany
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ≤ NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Midelfort, H. C. Erik.
Exorcism and Enlightenment : Johann Joseph Gassner and
the demons of eighteenth-century Germany / H. C. Erik
Midelfort.
p. cm. — (The Terry lectures)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn 0-300-10669-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Gassner Johann Joseph, 1727–1779. 2. Exorcism—
Germany—History—18th century. 3. Faith and reason—
Christianity—History of doctrines—18th century.
4. Enlightenment—Germany. I. Title. II. Series.
bx2340.m53 2005
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This book is for Anne
THE DWIGHT HARRINGTON TERRY FOUNDATION LECTURES
ON RELIGION IN THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
The deed of gift declares that ‘‘the object of this

foundation is not the promotion of scientific
investigation and discovery, but rather the
assimilation and interpretation of that which has
been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its
application to human welfare, especially by the
building of the truths of science and philosophy
into the structure of a broadened and purified
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will greatly stimulate intelligent effort for the
improvement of human conditions and the
advancement of the race in strength and excellence
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lectures be given by men eminent in their
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of nature, especially of evolution . . . also such
interpretations of literature and sociology as are in
accord with the spirit of this foundation, to the end
that the Christian spirit may be nurtured in the
fullest light of the world’s knowledge and that
mankind may be helped to attain its highest
possible welfare and happiness upon this earth.’’
The present work constitutes the latest volume
published on this foundation.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 The Experience of Demons 11
2 A Niche in the Incubator: Ecclesiastical

Politics and the Empire 32
3 Healing 59
4 Interpretation 87
5 Conversation and Ridicule 118
Epilogue 143
Notes 149
Index 211
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book had its origin in the Dwight H. Terry Lectures delivered
at Yale University during the spring semester of 2003 before a lively
audience. I should like to express here my profound gratitude for
having the chance to live once more at Yale, to use the magnificent
library collections, and to enjoy the cordial collegiality that goes with
living in a residential college. The Terry Committee served as my
introduction to several of the congenial communities of scholars who
populate Yale, and I would like to thank specifically committee mem-
bers Harry Attridge, Michael Della Rocca, Leo Hickey, Dale Martin,
Bill Summers, and especially Dianne Witte, who managed the many
details of my lectureship with grace and efficiency. My sojourn would
also have been much the poorer without the help and constant friend-
ship of Carlos Eire, who commented frequently on my evolving
thoughts about Johann Joseph Gassner and reassured me that concen-
trating on such an apparently minor and largely forgotten figure
would prove productive. I would be sadly remiss, too, if I did not
acknowledge my debt to the department of history at Yale for granting
me an office and administrative support. At Ezra Stiles College, Mas-
ter Traugott Lawler and his wife Peggy went out of their way to
include me in the life of the college and provided me with chances to
explain myself to colleagues. They helped make life for my wife, Anne,
and me most pleasant. The most extraordinary social experience at
Yale, however, came at the hands of Professors Nelson Donegan of
neuroscience and Howard Stern of the German department, who
together hosted a Friday afternoon ‘‘moderately cheerful’’ Stammtisch
that surpassed all expectations of affability, learned conversation, and
friendship.
This project, however, began ten years ago with the friendship of
scholars who helped me find my way into the forbidding world of the
late eighteenth century. Wolfgang Behringer was perhaps the first to
xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
encourage me to take on Gassner, and I only regret that this book

does not settle or even try to settle many of the intriguing questions
he posed as I began my research. Elmar Schallert, the diocesan archi-
vist of Feldkirch, was helpful and friendly when I first turned up
looking for Gassneriana. He gave me perhaps my first introduction to
the surviving manuscript remains of the exorcist and helped me to
understand the place and purpose of Gassner’s diaries. In Neuenstein
I was lucky enough to have the help of Dr. Peter Schiffer, who not
only knew what I might be looking for but was willing to photocopy
most of it.
In Augsburg I was fortunate to fall in with another remarkable
band of congenial scholars, chief of whom were the members of
the Thursday Stammtisch comprising scholars and administrators of
the local archives and libraries. I should thank by name Hans-Jörg
Künast, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, and Georg Feuerer. At the
Augsburg Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, I was graciously aided by
Wolfgang Mayer and Eckehart Nowak, who provided me many cour-
tesies. Without their help, my studies would have taken much longer
and would surely have been even more incomplete than they are. This
is also the place to thank Klaus Graf for his tireless work for the web
list ‘‘Hexenforschung,’’ through which I have discovered many re-
searchers in related fields and countless bibliographical leads. Dr.
Burkhard Peter kindly allowed me to read several papers on Gassner
and psychotherapy before they were published, and Professor Ger-
hard Ammerer provided me welcome assistance in locating articles he
had published in obscure locations. Hermann Ehmer and Martin
Brecht were also helpful on specific points of detail. Librarians at the
state libraries of Bregenz, Feldkirch, Bamberg, Munich, and Stuttgart
have always been willing to help me on short notice. The notes record
my specific debts, but I should also like to thank generally the friendly
and helpful archivists of state, ecclesiastical, and local archives, who
did so much to recover diaries, letters, notes, reactions, and reports
concerning Gassner, as well as the postmortem inquest recording his
few worldly possessions at the time of his death. These repositories
include the diocesan archive of Feldkirch, the princely archive of
xii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Hohenlohe in Neuenstein, the episcopal Ordinariatsarchiv in Re-

gensburg, the Bavarian Hauptstaatsarchiv in Munich, and the episco-
pal archive of Augsburg.
Near the end of my researches, I spent a semester at Oxford Uni-
versity enjoying the hospitality of Wolfson College. I’m deeply grate-
ful to the many libraries of Oxford for providing a perfect environ-
ment in which to read and write. I must specifically thank Lyndal
Roper, Robin Briggs, Robert Evans, and Thomas Biskup for their
advice and assistance. Various versions of the chapters of this book
have been delivered as lectures at the universities of Oxford, Cam-
bridge, and London, as well as at Tübingen University and the Histo-
risches Kolleg in Munich. At Cambridge I learned much in a very
short time from Simon Schaffer. At the Institute of Historical Re-
search in London I gained immeasurably from David Wootton. I am
grateful to all of these institutions and to my alert listeners, from
whom I have learned much. Colleagues at the University of Virginia,
moreover, have long had to listen to me go on about an obscure
eighteenth-century exorcist. They have done much more than toler-
ate this tedious behavior, and I owe a great debt to Alon Confino, Ted
Lendon, Duane Osheim, and Anne Jacobson Schutte. Sophie Rosen-
feld subjected the entire manuscript to a learned and searching cri-
tique from which I have gratefully profited. Two anonymous readers
for Yale University Press also made several shrewd criticisms, to
which I have tried to respond. It was also a proud moment when my
daughter Lucy read part of the manuscript and made useful sugges-
tions. Most of all, I am grateful to Anne McKeithen, who has repeat-
edly rearranged her life and work in order to help me. She has accom-
panied me to strange towns in strange lands, has cheered me up when
I occasionally concluded that this project was going nowhere, and has
scrutinized every word of this book more than once, appraising my
conclusions and my prose with a humane and critical eye. I might
have written a book without her, but it would not have been so good,
and the process would not have been so much fun. Thank you, Anne.
xiii
INTRODUCTION
In December of 1774 wonders were reported in the little Fran-

conian town of Ellwangen, situated in the broad, pleasant valley of the
Jagst River northeast of Stuttgart. The town was the proud seat of the
imperial prince provost of Ellwangen and his high noble canons, and
a refuge for the embattled former members of the Jesuit Order. Two
centuries earlier some of Germany’s fiercest witchcraft trials had
taken place in Ellwangen, and now the devil seemed to be on the
rampage again. Beneath her gray stone walls, in the imposing castle
and in a house exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Augs-
burg, a short, balding, rotund Catholic priest created a sensation by
exorcising countless epileptics, the crippled, and even the blind. On
the morning of December 21, one supplicant was a sturdy rustic who
suffered from ‘‘St. Vitus’ dance,’’ the strange ailment that caused
its afflicted to leap and twitch uncontrollably. We do not know what
St. Vitus’ dance actually was, and most cases had disappeared by the
sixteenth century, but perhaps the condition lingered on in the region
around Ellwangen, because the imposing Romanesque church of Ell-
wangen was dedicated to St. Vitus. An excited crowd had gathered to
watch the proceedings, including noblemen and visitors from distant
Munich. Astonishingly, the priest did not immediately summon forth
the demons afflicting the man; instead, with solemn imprecations he
bade demons to do their worst. At his command the demons re-
sponded. The farmer began suddenly dancing and snapping his fin-
gers. He hopped round the room three times, making some of the
assembled observers giggle. A hostile witness declared that he jigged
about as if he were in a tavern. When this had gone on for a time,
however, the priest ordered the demons to give the poor man an
attack of epilepsy ( fallende Sucht). Suddenly the fellow collapsed on
the floor, flailing and thrashing, hurling himself about and ‘‘bellowing
like an ox.’’ Then with one Latin word—cesset, ‘‘let it cease’’—the
1
INTRODUCTION
exorcist made it all stop.∞ Only then did the priest proceed to a full
canonical exorcism. One skeptical witness from Munich was aston-
ished to see that this piece of religious theater was taken seriously by
almost all of those assembled. He laughed at such antics and declared
that they were flatly incredible, but he could not deny that the peasant
had acted as if possessed by demons and that they seemed to have
relaxed their grip on the man as soon as the priest ordered them to
do so.
This peasant was not an isolated example. Such episodes were re-
peated countless times in different places, and the reports by both
credulous and hostile witnesses multiplied as southern Germany ex-
perienced a full-fledged religious revival surrounding the figure of
Father Johann Joseph Gassner, a now little-remembered exorcist
from the Vorarlberg in the mountains of far western Austria. His
story is full of surprises, not least for those like the incredulous wit-
ness in Ellwangen, who refused to recognize that in the controversy
between religion and reason in the late eighteenth century most of
the best empirical evidence lay on the side of the exorcists.
Slowly, slowly we are learning that the eighteenth century was
more than an age of reason. Religious thinkers and believers did not
simply evaporate under the brilliant illumination of the self-anointed
representatives of Enlightenment; instead they often sturdily resisted
the trivializing voices of advanced criticism and crackling anticlerical-
ism. It would also be wrong to assume that religious thinkers merely
joined in reaction to the ‘‘progressive’’ forces of the age.≤ In this book
we will see that the chief scientific ideas that competed with the
religious notion of demonic possession were hardly secure. This is the
reason the story of Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779) came to
fascinate me. I was amazed to discover that he and his enthusiastic
supporters often marshaled evidence and arguments that seemed at
least as persuasive as those of the Enlightenment. Dr. Franz Anton
Mesmer (1734–1815), for example, claimed that he had successfully
explained Gassner’s exorcisms by invoking his newly discovered force
of ‘‘animal magnetism,’’ but within a few years such explanations
looked even less credible than those that depended upon demons. In
2
INTRODUCTION
five chapters I will explore, first, the reasons why people of the late
eighteenth century continued to use demons as a tool with which to
understand and explain their experiences. In subsequent chapters I
will concentrate on the imperial politics that first guaranteed Gassner
a hearing and then shut him down (chapter 2); the cures that Gassner
achieved (chapter 3); the learned (and sometimes not so learned)
debate over Jesus’ exorcisms (chapter 4); and the remarkable contest
concerning Gassner that convulsed almost all of Germany, a contro-
versy that helped to define the nature of Enlightened debate (chap-
ter 5).
Critics of Gassner often claimed that his exorcisms achieved their
effects by ‘‘sympathy’’ or by suggestion (or what the Germans called
Einbildung). We may see in this interpretation an early definition of
the ‘‘placebo response,’’ but unfortunately these critics were usually
arguing by unsubstantiated assertion rather than relying on any evi-
dence. Indeed, as we will see in the chapter on healing, Johann Joseph
Gassner had bushel baskets of careful eyewitness testimony to the
effectiveness of his healing rituals. In accord with the best scientific
standards of his day, his sympathetic witnesses included noblemen
and sober physicians.
Enlightened biblical commentators tried to show that the stories of
Jesus’ supposedly powerful exorcisms had been badly misunderstood
for centuries and rested on nothing more than Jewish superstition
and the errors of translators. But here, too, closer scrutiny shows that
the ‘‘neologist’’ biblical critics were usually asserting what they could
not easily prove, and in so doing they were imputing to Scripture
meanings that we now regard as hopelessly anachronistic. Here again
the backers of traditional religion did not slink away in helpless dis-
grace (see chapter 4). As Jeffrey Freedman has recently pointed out,
in their controversies with religious conservatives, Enlightened ob-
servers often had such heavy axes to grind, such a priori assumptions
that supernatural events were simply impossible, that they could not
see that their own prejudices were getting in the way of a more sober
evaluation of what evidence they had.≥ Indeed, one could conclude
polemically that the Enlightened theologians were trying to perform
3
INTRODUCTION
an exorcism of their own, trying to banish the demons of baroque

culture by renaming them as superstition and enthusiasm, thus using
their own verbal rituals and gestures of derision.
So when we study the brief period of Father Gassner’s celebrity and
his final defeat, we are not looking at a simple victory for the Enlight-
enment. The political forces that ultimately called a halt to Gassner’s
exorcisms were at least as upset at his evident success and the public
tumult he was provoking as they were incensed at his unauthorized
extension of exorcism to thousands of cases that the Roman Church
would not at that time have approved (see chapter 2).
Even the noisy debate that erupted around Gassner was not a clear-
cut victory for the forces of reason over the die-hard partisans of
‘‘baroque Catholicism.’’ Participants in the North German Enlight-
enment and their South German imitators often engaged in raucous,
cruel, and demeaning ridicule rather than in the calmer conversation
of sweet reason. The Gassner controversy, therefore, polarized with-
out persuading and established a sadly familiar pattern for such argu-
ments that we can observe right down to our own day (see chapter 5).
In all these ways exorcism and this specific exorcist brought out
both the worst and the best from the Enlightened opponents of tradi-
tional demonology and Catholic ritual. In the struggle over Gassner
and his cures we can get to know some of the wrinkled contours of
late-eighteenth-century German politics and culture. In the process
I think we can also glimpse the origins of problems that have not
gone away.
It seems remarkable that an eighteenth-century Catholic exorcist
should become the center of religious attention throughout much of
southern Germany. Such excitements do not sit comfortably with our
schoolbook version of the age. And yet thousands of desperate peo-
ple, the blind, the halt, and the lame, made their way to visit Father
Gassner, hoping that he would heal them of their infirmities by cast-
ing out demons. Countless observers came just to gawk. Many others
found in Father Gassner welcome proof that traditional religion still
had some fight left in it. For us, accustomed to think of the 1770s as
the decade of the American Revolution and the flourishing of a trans-
4
INTRODUCTION
European Enlightenment, the celebrity of a German Catholic exor-

cist seems distinctly odd. Was this not the age of ‘‘the laws of nature
and of nature’s God’’? Was this not the decade when French, Ger-
man, and British philosophers reached the peak of their influence, an
apogee marked by the publication of the last volumes of Diderot and
d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, by the publication of Joseph Priestley’s dis-
covery of oxygen, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and the first vol-
umes of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Even
if we concede that such examples of advanced thought were not to
everyone’s taste, we may also recall that the 1770s was a time of
classic, hard-nosed realpolitik, that in 1772 the kingdoms of Prussia,
Austria, and Russia began dismantling Poland by redistributing one-
third of her lands and people among themselves. Meanwhile, for
Roman Catholics the 1770s are perhaps most memorable for the
suppression of the Jesuit Order in 1773, one of the surest signs that
the Enlightenment was having a serious impact even on the Catholic
Church. What was an exorcist doing attracting thousands of enthusi-
astic followers in the 1770s?
Gassner does not seem to fit our view of an Enlightened age. But he
also seems to defy many other cultural trends of his day. For elite
members of the Holy Roman Empire the 1770s marked a time when
German culture was finally rejoining the vast concert of European
culture and politics. After more than a century of seeming peculiarly
backward, German writers and scholars began to celebrate their latest
achievements. In 1775, for example, Maria Theresa of Austria abol-
ished the judicial use of torture, thus declaring that her state would no
longer inflict deliberate and excruciating pain in order to extract truth
from those presumed guilty. The enlightened throughout the Holy
Roman Empire applauded noisily. In 1772 Johann Kaspar Lavater of
Zurich published the first edition of his remarkably successful Essay
on Physiognomy, in which he tried to show that a person’s character
was visible in his facial features. He thus achieved an important new
empirical and philosophical synthesis in the study of human nature.
In 1774 Johann Wolfgang Goethe published his explosively best-
selling Sorrows of Young Werther, prompting a wave of proto-Romantic
5
INTRODUCTION
suicides; in the same year Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published anon-

ymously the first of Hermann Samuel Reimarus’s sensational Frag-
ments, challenging the biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection and
other miracles. And in 1775 Franz Anton Mesmer began to practice
his newly invented healing art (‘‘mesmerism’’) in southern Germany,
well before he moved on to celebrity in Paris. None of these German
events suggests the capacity for profound religious renewal coupled
with a revival of demonic possession. The people who streamed to
visit Father Gassner seem to have lived in a different time and place
from the world of Goethe, Lessing, and Lavater, and far from the
French Enlightenment and the American Revolution. Perhaps the
1770s were not one decade but several.
When we ignore the awkward realities and contradictions of this or
any period, we shortchange the past. We shortchange ourselves as
well. If we choose to remember only the ‘‘progressive’’ parts of his-
tory, the ones that readily ‘‘make sense’’ to us, we oversimplify the
past and our own lives. We cultivate an artificially naive view of the
world. I do not mean simply that two hundred years ago a decade
could be blandly ‘‘the best of times and the worst of times,’’ depend-
ing on where you were, but rather that the very act of singling out
specific features (and calling them better or worse) always depends on
who you are. The 1770s contained unexpected crosscurrents, and the
strange fact is that several of the above-mentioned famous events
and celebrated authors are connected to each other through Father
Johann Joseph Gassner.
This book is far from the first study of Gassner and his movement.
He has already found his way into three niches of scholarship, to
which I am much indebted. I first learned of Gassner in the inspired
pages of Henri Ellenberger, whose Discovery of the Unconscious places
the dispute between Gassner and Mesmer at the very origins of mod-
ern, dynamic psychotherapy.∂ A second vein of scholarship that has
discovered and raised Gassner to prominence is the history of witch-
craft, a topic with which I have long been concerned. In the brilliant
concluding pages of Wolfgang Behringer’s history of witch hunting in
Bavaria, Gassner appears as a late echo of the 1760s ‘‘Bavarian witch-
6
INTRODUCTION
craft war.’’∑ And thirdly, Father Gassner has not escaped the atten-
tions of local and regional historians, who have combed the archives
of South Germany and Austria in an effort to illuminate what one of
them called the ‘‘regional prism of the past,’’ the way in which local
knowledge fleshes out our understanding of the larger historical pat-
terns we learn about in school.∏ In this book I have not subordinated
Gassner to some other story or confined him to a region but have
concentrated my attention on his healing campaign, the religious
revival it sparked, and the heated controversy he provoked. In this
way I hope to introduce Father Gassner to a wider public, using him
as a vehicle with which to explore the awkward and ungainly transi-
tion to secular modernity that was taking shape in those years.
I recognize that I am concentrating on an aspect of Catholic re-
ligious culture that was once considered hopelessly superstitious. De-
monic possession has long been linked to the darker pages of Euro-
pean history, to the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and to the supposed misdiagnosis of hysteria or other psy-
chosomatic conditions. The cardinal fact is, however, that long after
witchcraft ceased to trouble the waking and sleeping hours of most
Europeans, demons and the devil were thought to be independently
active in this world. We live in a day when charismatic healing has re-
vived within the Catholic Church and in certain Protestant churches
too. Exorcism is now perhaps more widely and more openly practiced
than it was one hundred years ago. And when we inquire into the
supposed death of demonic possession in the eighteenth century, we
discover that the story is far from straightforward. It was never easy to
exclude the possible influence of demons unless one simply declared
(for whatever reasons) that their effects were imaginary and impos-
sible. Eighteenth-century physicians and commentators, especially in
Catholic lands, were often far more cautious in this area than we
might suppose. Objections to exorcism were as often rooted in an
anti-ritualist Jansenist spirituality or in the fear of ‘‘enthusiasm’’ as in
the new science or in a more dogmatic skepticism.π
The Gassner scandal was one of the biggest and noisiest of the
late eighteenth century in Germany. In consequence we also learn
7
INTRODUCTION
something substantial about the growth of the ‘‘public sphere’’ during

the Enlightenment. In an age when coffee houses, learned societies,
and reading clubs were creating a polite space in which literate bur-
ghers and aristocrats could gather to discuss the issues of the day
without the overt censorship and supervision of an absolute monarch,
the cacophony of religious debate strikes an odd note. The historians
of the public sphere have too often assumed that the spaces for public
discussion were overwhelmingly Protestant, and Enlightened Protes-
tant at that.∫ The Gassner debate was remarkable in part because at
least as many partisans as opponents of Gassner took part. A decent
respect to the opinions of both sides in this affair yields far greater
insight into the world of the eighteenth century and into the pecu-
liarities of the German Enlightenment than we would obtain by lis-
tening only to the self-proclaimed members of the ‘‘Party of Human-
ity.’’ Some readers may feel that by paying so much attention to
Gassner and the enemies of the Enlightenment, I reveal my own
hidden sympathies with critics of that cultural movement. I would
maintain, rather, that any Enlightenment worthy of the name should
be able and willing to consider the arguments and evidence pro-
duced by its opponents without resorting to ridicule and intellectual
subterfuge.
For some readers perhaps the biggest surprise will be that Gassner
and his supporters could spend so much time and effort on the dan-
gers represented by the devil and not collapse in a paroxysm of witch
hunting. Aside from the abortive trial of Maria Anna Schwägelin,
Gassner’s healing campaign remained free of accusations and remark-
ably free even of suspicions of witchcraft. In this way the recent surge
of scholarly interest in witchcraft actually serves us poorly, for it mis-
leads us into expecting that cases of demonic possession would auto-
matically devolve into accusations of witchcraft. This pattern was
indeed common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and did
linger on into the eighteenth century. At the Premonstratensian clois-
ter in Würzburg, beginning in 1744, for example, several nuns fell
into what appeared to be demonic possession, and the subpriorin,
Maria Renata Singer, was accused of being the witch who had pro-
8
INTRODUCTION
voked these outrages. For over three years exorcisms took place until
finally the old woman broke under pressure and confessed that she
was indeed guilty.Ω She was beheaded and burned in June of 1749 after
a noisy dispute that pitted skeptical administrators of the bishop of
Würzburg against the city council of Würzburg along with clerical
allies from the Benedictine, Premonstratensian, and Jesuit Orders.∞≠
There was, however, no necessary or inevitable connection between
cases of demonic possession and witchcraft accusations. Throughout
the Middle Ages, in fact, the ‘‘discernment of spirits’’ was a regular
exercise in understanding religious experience and in differentiating
between fraud and genuine experience, and among divine, angelic,
and demonic visitations of various sorts.∞∞ Until the end of the Middle
Ages priests and theologians who tested the spirits did not imagine
that witches could induce demonic possession, and this notion repre-
sented one of the dangerous cultural inventions that we associate with
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gassner himself was not
entirely free of ideas about witches and bewitchment, as we will see,
but he reached back to an earlier constellation of ideas by claiming
that the devil could cause all manner of disorders. For him, demonic
possession was not mainly caused or even prompted by witches (i.e.,
by human agents) and was not even characterized by supernatural or
preternatural (strange) behavior. Indeed, the naturalizing impulse of
the Enlightenment may have expressed itself in Gassner’s assumption
that demons imitated nature so perfectly that only an exorcism could
detect them. Ironically, by separating demons and demonic posses-
sion from witchcraft, Father Gassner helped ensure their indepen-
dent survival into the more skeptical nineteenth century and even
down to today.
The story that unfolds here is therefore full of ironies and unex-
pected outcomes. We may not need to decide whether Gassner’s heal-
ing rituals actually ‘‘worked,’’ but two centuries ago it was striking
how much empirical and well-attested evidence could be assembled
in favor of the view that they did. We may not all accept the force
of demons in our world today, but the Gassner debate highlights
the difficulties biblical Christians had (and have) when they tried
9
INTRODUCTION
to reform or deny traditional biblical doctrines concerning the physi-

cal effects of unclean spirits and demons. If the Enlightenment as
a project has generally advanced across this disputed terrain, it has
often done so by mere assertion and self-satisfied ridicule rather
than by looking closely at the debates that rattled the comfortable in
1775. Certain elements of this story still seem to me to have an un-
canny power of unsettling our familiar assumptions about reason and
experience.
10
one
THE EXPERIENCE OF DEMONS
L[ucius]: ‘‘So you’re a free thinker and a skeptic. So what? If real and
incontrovertible experiences show that Herr Gassner has made many
sick persons well, then you just have to believe these experiences.’’
—[Christoph Heinrich Korn] Gespräch im Reiche der Lebendigen
Gassner was not the only one dabbling with the world of demons
in the mid-1770s. In the South German, Upper Swabian town of
Langenegg a poverty-stricken, guilt-ridden woman, Maria Anna
Schwägelin, lay miserably confined in a spital for the poor. Orphaned
early in life, she had abandoned her Catholic faith in order to marry a
Protestant from Memmingen, but the marriage plans were broken
off. She became increasingly convinced that in betraying her faith,
she had left herself open to the assaults of the Evil One. Crippled,
she began to wonder if her troubles were caused by the devil. A five-
year-old child living in the poorhouse now began to seem demon
possessed, but a local pastor decided that the child was actually be-
witched. Schwägelin was beaten and soon confessed that she was
indeed a witch. Transferred to the Imperial Abbey of Kempten for
trial, she continued her confessions and was convicted in April of
1775. Historians have long believed that she was the last witch exe-
cuted on German soil.∞ Recent research has shown that Maria Anna
was not executed, however, and perhaps she should stand instead for
how little we really understand the Germany of the 1770s.
During the months that Maria Anna Schwägelin was suffering in a
poorhouse and confessing to her troubles with the devil, Father Gass-
ner was touring Upper Swabia, demonstrating his abilities to detect
and expel the devil with uncanny efficiency. In 1774 he published a
pious little book on his methods right in Kempten, probably contrib-
uting to the renewed interest in demonic possession and witchcraft
that got Maria Anna into such deep trouble. Born in 1727, Johann
11
Joseph Gassner came from Braz in the Vorarlberg (Austria), and had
studied with the Jesuits in Prague and Innsbruck but did not become a
member of their Society. Instead, he became a secular priest in 1750
and took up duties in Dalaas (1751–1758) and then in Klösterle, east
of Feldkirch (1758–1774), at the foot of the immense Arlberg Moun-
tains. Apparently from early in his pastoral career, Gassner had em-
ployed special blessings and cures; but as a result of a series of chronic
ailments from 1752 to 1759 he developed a special technique for
healing the headaches, fainting spells, and sudden weakness he expe-
rienced, especially whenever he was to preach or say Mass. He also
sought out doctors and used their prescriptions, he wrote—but to no
effect.≤ In the end, Gassner concluded that his illness came from the
devil, and accordingly he invoked the Holy Name of Jesus and, in
effect, exorcised himself. Using this method of cure, Gassner devel-
oped a regional reputation as a healer in the 1760s and learned to tell
if the devil was at hand by practicing ‘‘test exorcisms,’’ in which he
would order the devil, if he was present, to perform certain acts.
Sometimes he addressed the devil in Latin, a language that he as-
sumed his parishioners would not understand even though the devil,
as a great linguist, would have no trouble. If he found that a demon
was in fact present, Gassner took his time, forcing the demon to move
around in the patient’s body and to manifest himself in various ways,
until the patient too became persuaded of this startling truth: that he
or she was possessed. This is a good example of how an idea could be
mobilized, with practice, to become a full-fledged experience. One
sometimes reads that Gassner believed all diseases to come from the
devil, but this he specifically denied. In fact, his probative exorcisms
make sense only if some illnesses and disabilities were of natural
origin. By practicing on his patients, by helping them to experience
their condition as demonic, Gassner was creating the first and crucial
precondition for successful exorcism. It was a kind of negative spir-
itual exercise that paved the way for further experiences.≥ He allows
us to see how our concepts and beliefs make certain experiences possi-
ble and others almost impossible.
This chapter explores the uses of the devil as a thinking tool, a way
12
of understanding and shaping one’s experience and religion. In pro-

ceeding in this manner one runs the risk of sounding antiquarian and
anachronistic. Few reputable history professors take the devil seri-
ously anymore. What sensible person still thinks that demonic pos-
session might be real or that exorcism might help? ‘‘In these Enlight-
ened days,’’ we are told, and we tell ourselves, such ideas are rotting
on the compost heap of outmoded and dangerous ideas, displaced
by science, psychoanalysis, improved means of understanding Holy
Scripture, and by the feeling that if we let the devil back into public
discourse, we’ll open the door to witchcraft trials and demonically
obsessed nursery schools, cloisters, asylums, and hospitals all over
again. But here let me make an important clarification. I am not here
mounting a defense of the devil, who, if he exists, certainly does
not need my defense. Rather, I am suggesting that how we talk about
such matters matters. How we talk shapes how we think and what we
can fully experience. When Gassner and his supplicants spoke of the
devil, they were speaking of and simultaneously shaping their own
experiences.
Gassner’s Healing Career
Hundreds of patients came to Gassner for relief, but he did not

treat them all. Only if he first got results with his ‘‘praecepta’’ or ad-
monitions did he feel assured that a full-fledged ‘‘benedictio’’ (bless-
ing) or exorcism would get rid of the devil for good. In a diary (‘‘Dia-
rium’’) that he kept for 1769 he recorded over two hundred cures and
healing miracles, and in chapter 3 we will spend some time looking at
these and other cases of healing. It is worth noticing, however, that
Gassner did not think that he was dealing with classic instances
of full-fledged demonic possession, for which the expected symp-
toms would have been amazing, supernatural, ‘‘wondrous.’’ We find
among those who sought him out virtually none of the classic signs of
demoniac possession: no supernatural strength, no frothing at the
mouth,∂ no unaccountable knowledge of distant events. They showed
no mysterious knowledge of foreign languages they had never heard
13
or learned, although Gassner did deploy this last symptom in one of

his favorite test exorcisms, addressing the supposed demon in Latin
and (often) getting a response that he assumed could only mean that
the devil was present. Basically, Gassner employed blessings and exor-
cisms to treat illnesses that looked natural. It seems that this was one
way in which the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century actually
affected his practice: the devil no longer looked as if he were separate
from the world of normal appearance. Instead, even sickness and
chronic crippling that looked ordinary might come from the devil.
In the summer of 1774 Gassner’s growing reputation jumped be-
yond the region of Vorarlberg, Tirol, and eastern Switzerland, where
he had gained a sensational but merely regional reputation as a won-
der worker. With permission from his bishop in Chur, Gassner made
a remarkable tour of Upper Swabia, the region just north of the Lake
of Constance.∑ In Wolfegg he healed Countess Maria Bernardina
Truchsess von Wolfegg and Friedberg along with many others, then
moving on to other tiny counties and abbeys of the region. He spent a
month or more with the abbot of Salem and began to cure desperate
patients by the score, often treating fifty to eighty a day. Altogether
that summer he reckoned that he had treated three hundred nuns and
eight thousand persons of all sorts.∏ By the fall of 1774 he was back in
his parish of Klösterle, having been gone far longer than his original
leave of absence allowed. But now he received a summons to the
Princely Provostry (Fürstpropstei) of Ellwangen, where the blind An-
ton Ignaz von Fugger, bishop of Regensburg (reg. 1769–1787), was
also the prince provost of Ellwangen. Although Gassner determined
that the bishop’s blindness was merely natural and therefore beyond
priestly help, his stay in Ellwangen brought him to new levels of
success. Thousands of persons seeking help jammed the streets of the
little town and overburdened local hostelries. Gassner stayed there
from November of 1774 to June of 1775, displaying his techniques to
the faithful and to skeptics alike. Members of the higher and lower
nobility joined the throngs of commoners in traveling to Ellwangen,
hoping for help, but also looking for proof that traditional, unenlight-
ened (perhaps we should call it ‘‘Counter-Enlightened’’) Catholicism
14
still had some fight left in it during the years immediately following
the papal dissolution of the Jesuit Order, a move that many German
nobles had regarded as a craven concession to the worldly spirit of
their age. Bishop Anton Ignaz rewarded Gassner by appointing him
his court chaplain and making him a member of his ‘‘spiritual coun-
cil’’ (Geistlicher Rat).
By now Gassner was famous throughout Germany and even in
parts of France. But he was also attracting the attention of enlight-
ened skeptics, including especially Don Ferdinand Sterzinger, a re-
forming Theatine from Munich, prominent member of the Bavarian
Academy of Sciences, and one of the leaders of the Bavarian attack on
witchcraft in the 1760s; and Johann Salomo Semler, professor of en-
lightened (‘‘neologist,’’ or cautiously historicizing) theology at Halle
in northern (Prussian) Germany. On the other hand, a handful of ex-
Jesuits now sprang to his defense and mounted a noisy campaign
trumpeting empirical claims based on careful observation and scru-
pulous reporting. And certain Protestants in Germany and Switzer-
land were so impressed with these claims that they began to take an
intense interest in Gassner. The most famous of these was Johann
Kaspar Lavater, the renowned pastor and physiognomist of Zurich,
about whom I will have more to say.
In the summer of 1775, Gassner moved with Bishop Anton Ignaz
from Ellwangen eastward over one hundred miles to Regensburg,
where he worked his wondrous cures until September, when he
moved his operations northward to the Upper Palatinate (at Sulzbach
and Amberg), but under increasingly intense scrutiny and in appar-
ently decreasing numbers. One reason for moving around like this
may have been to bring his healing powers to ever larger groups of
sufferers, but these peripatetic missions also firmed up support for
Gassner’s movement among secular rulers, such as the Upper Palati-
nate, the court at Sulzbach, or the Bavarian administration in Am-
berg. As we will see in chapter 2, Gassner seemed for a time to be
exploiting the weaknesses or peculiarities of the Holy Roman Empire
with great success. Prudent men, however, urged greater caution. In
November of 1775 the Emperor Joseph II ordered Gassner to leave
15
Regensburg; the archbishops of Prague and Salzburg issued pastoral

letters warning of the misuse of exorcism; and in April of 1776 eccle-
siastical enemies secured a condemnation from Pope Pius VI himself,
which settled the matter, at least as far as his actual exorcisms went.
Gassner was forced to take up simple parish duties in tiny Pondorf,
several hours down the Danube from Regensburg, where he died in
1779. But in his heyday he had exorcised and blessed thousands and
tens of thousands.π
The Problem of Evil
How shall we understand what Gassner was doing? He was treating

a familiar series of miseries with a novel diagnosis, and as we will see,
he was using a form of exorcism that was not entirely orthodox either.
One way to regard his work is to see it as a response to the question of
evil. Susan Neiman has recently pointed out that in the eighteenth
century, following the challenge of Pierre Bayle, many European in-
tellectuals had increasing trouble understanding how a gracious God
could inflict massive misery on thousands or even millions of inno-
cent sufferers. The Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755 had cost
perhaps twenty to thirty thousand lives, and it seemed hard or at least
hard-hearted to argue the Leibnizian or Wolffian line that this was all
part of the ‘‘best of all possible worlds.’’∫ Some, like Voltaire, heaped
ridicule upon the claim that the world always worked toward progress
and human benefit. Others, like Rousseau, pointed to the human
factors that contributed to natural disasters, such as poorly built
houses and overcrowding. Following such lines of physical investiga-
tion, some began to think that nature was not itself a theater of evil, a
place where natural evils existed to punish mankind for its moral evils.
For such thinkers natural accidents and natural disasters were merely
unfortunate; they concluded that true evil ought to be confined to
those events or experiences that were the product of someone’s will.
This amounted to redefining the distinction between natural evil and
moral evil, and thus emphasizing the way evil entered the world as
human beings became socially human.Ω
16
By the middle of the eighteenth century it was beginning to seem

that efforts to explain evil might be doomed to blasphemy if they
seemed to blame God for flaws He might have avoided. But as Nei-
man stresses, the refusal to deal with evil as a problem provided no
solution. People still demanded (and reason still demands) an expla-
nation, even if the wrongs we suffer and the wrongs others suffer do
not come as divine punishments anymore. From this perspective, it
makes historical sense that Johann Joseph Gassner was emphasizing
the role of the devil in causing a large share of the miseries to which
humankind is subject. It was Gassner’s way of saying that misery was
in fact intelligible; it was not accidental and not merely natural but
rather the product of a cunning and depraved will. Banishing the devil
was his therapeutic solution, but Gassner did not proceed in the
manner that a naturalizing Enlightenment did. For most Enlightened
intellectuals did more than banish the devil: they read him out of
reality. The trouble was that declaring the death of the devil became a
prelude to the death of God and signaled an early defeat on the field
of meaning. Without the devil, it seemed, certain evils simply could
not be understood.∞≠ It will appear, therefore, that demonology was
actually a practical means of doing theology, a negative theology to be
sure, but one connected closely to the human quest for meaning. So
instead of flatly forgetting the devil, Gassner was trying on a massive
scale to retain and yet banish (but not to annihilate) the devil. That
was an unstable effort, one doomed to condemnation by both the
church and the state in his day. But it was not so foolish as the En-
lightened thought then and frankly have ever since.
Franz Anton Mesmer as Rival
At just the moment that Gassner’s fame was at its peak and was
attracting the skeptical attentions of churchmen and enlightened rul-
ers such as Emperor Joseph II and Elector Maximilian III Joseph
of Bavaria, another healer came out of Austria to fascinate his own
throngs of enthusiastic followers. Inspired by the work of Viennese
Jesuit court astronomer Maximilian Hell (1720–1792), Franz Anton
17
Mesmer (1734–1815) had discovered in 1774 that he could manipu-

late strange forces in some of his patients, forces that he called mag-
netic. Following Hell’s example, he had begun working with ‘‘real
magnets’’ made of metal, glass, and stone, but subsequently found
that he could achieve the same amazing effects on patients by mere
touch and concentration; and so he distinguished this new magnetism
from the magnetism found in inanimate nature and called it ‘‘animal
magnetism,’’ a term he probably picked up from the seventeenth-
century Jesuit savant Athanasius Kircher.∞∞ With this new therapeutic
weapon and with the elaborate theory that went with it, he became a
celebrity in Vienna, entertaining the young Mozart and healing the
rich and famous. After a frustrating therapeutic setback at the Slova-
kian castle of a Hungarian nobleman, however, Mesmer decided to
return to his homeland, just north of the Lake of Constance.
It was July 1775, exactly one year since Gassner had spent three
successful months in the region. Like Gassner, Mesmer began to
attract crowds of hopeful patients, and his fame built to such an extent
that the electoral court of Maximilian III Joseph in Munich called
Mesmer to consult in the matter of Father Johann Joseph Gassner,
who was still conducting his own healing operations in Regensburg,
an exempt imperial city surrounded by Bavarian territory. In No-
vember of 1775 Mesmer gave the Munich commissioners and the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences extraordinary demonstrations of his
‘‘magnetic’’ powers, prompting patients to display and then to sup-
press symptoms with little more than the touch of a finger. His ‘‘cures’’
seemed to be just like those of Gassner, except that they did not
involve the use of exorcisms, blessings, or the name of Jesus. He even
claimed to have cured Peter von Osterwald, one of the chief members
of the academy and a leading figure of the Bavarian Enlightenment.
Dr. Mesmer, indeed, declared that Father Gassner was actually using
‘‘animal magnetism’’ without knowing it; after all, he too held the
patient’s head between his hands and sometimes stroked affected parts
of the body, much as Mesmer stroked patients with his magnetic
fingers. All of Gassner’s talk about the devil as a cause of human
ills seemed to Mesmer like nothing more than superstitious window
18
dressing. Henri Ellenberger has pointed to this collision of religious

and scientistic therapies as the dramatic hour when dynamic psychia-
try was born. For Ellenberger this was when a psychiatric paradigm of
healing through natural means was first substituted for the world of
spirits and exorcism. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences voted Mes-
mer into membership, the first and only such official recognition of
his new science and an indication that at that point he looked like a
major figure of the Enlightenment.∞≤
Mesmer and Gassner
Mesmer did not long confine himself to South German back-

waters, but this is not the place to trace again his roller-coaster ride
through Parisian society in the years 1778–1785 and his enthusiastic
adoption by radical social reformers in France.∞≥ I wish to call atten-
tion instead to several formal parallels between the cures of the exor-
cist Gassner and the therapeutic methods of the naturalizing, self-
proclaimedly scientific Mesmer.
First and most importantly, both men invoked invisible qualities or
forces as the root cause of physical ailments. Father Gassner regularly
admitted that the devil was not at the root of all human ills,∞∂ but
when he was, it only made sense (to him) to employ blessings and
probative exorcisms. Neither the magnetic fluid nor the devil, how-
ever, was strictly visible or palpable, even though popular images of
Gassner’s exorcisms often include a picture of a small, black creature
flying up out of a patient’s mouth or out a window. Reputable ob-
servers, and Gassner himself, gave no credence to such visible de-
mons, and Mesmer, too, never claimed that one could see the forces
of animal magnetism. One could only see the results of these entities,
in either case, and some invisible force seemed a reasonable inference.
Remember that researchers into electricity and magnetism had only
recently, with the work of Aepinus (1759), established the connection
between electricity and magnetism, and on into the 1790s (in the
work of Galvani) scientists studied what they called ‘‘animal elec-
tricity.’’ During the 1770s and early 1780s natural philosophers in
19
England and France were eagerly pursuing a program of research

into the therapeutic benefits of magnets.∞∑
Careful observers were well aware that swindlers and tricksters
could appear to provoke preternatural or even supernatural effects.
The new forms of electricity and magnetism had been exploited for
their entertainment value for over fifty years, and careful scholars
were skeptical of all that was claimed for these wondrous forces.∞∏
That is why commissions of inquiry looked so carefully at both Gass-
ner’s and Mesmer’s methods. In 1784 it was a French royal commis-
sion including Antoine de Lavoisier, Benjamin Franklin, and Dr. J. I.
Guillotin (inventor of the ‘‘guillotine’’) that condemned Mesmer’s
claims to have discovered an occult magnetic fluid.∞π Ironically, Gass-
ner withstood scrutiny more often than the supposedly more scien-
tific Mesmer. While Gassner, for example, passed the tests set for him
by four professors from the University of Ingolstadt in 1775, Mesmer
stood officially condemned by both royal commissions that examined
his theories in 1784. It was not until 1826 that a committee of the
medical section of the French Royal Academy of Sciences reopened
the question of Mesmer and this time concluded far more favorably.∞∫
But my point is that demonologists were just as eager as naturalists to
prove their claims in a public arena. Gassner’s diaries recording his
therapeutic victories mentioned often that the cures were permanent
(rather than merely transitory) and listed distinguished (and therefore
supposedly credible) witnesses. He was certainly not claiming that
one must take such religious phenomena on faith. Unfortunately, as
(opposite page) Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779) casting out a demon,

1775. It is worth noting that none of the eyewitness accounts of Gassner’s
healings ever claimed to have seen what this engraving depicts: a visible
demon in the shape of a black, flying, lizardlike creature. But the scene also
illustrates the mixed and crowded company that often gathered to witness
Gassner’s exorcisms. Source: Gespräch über die heilsamen Beschwörungen und
Wunderkuren des Herrn Gassners, 1775, title engraving; reprinted by the kind
permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.
20
21
we shall see, the Enlightened did not respond well to Gassner’s re-
quests for empirical investigations into these healings.
Indeed, that is what fueled the truly extraordinary literary battle
over Gassner. Partisan tracts flew about Germany with an intensity
that we otherwise associate with revolutions. The most complete
bibliography of the so-called Gassner-Streit lists twelve editions of
Gassner’s own little treatise, Weise fromm und gesund zu leben, auch
ruhig und gottselig zu sterben, oder nützlicher Unterricht wider den Teufel
zu streiten (The Way to Live Piously and Healthily, And how to Die
Peacefully and in God’s Grace; Or, Useful Instruction on How to
Fight against the Devil). That bibliography goes on to list 55 separate
books and pamphlets in favor of Gassner, 31 works opposing him, and
25 works that were neutral or interested in special aspects of the
controversy. In my researches, I have been able to add numerous titles
and editions to this list as well. Counting second and third editions,
translations, and all the newly discovered titles, it now appears that
close to 150 works appeared, the overwhelming majority published in
1775 and 1776.∞Ω All of Germany, North and South, Protestant and
Catholic, took part in this controversy, which depended not just on
general principles (for and against the testimony of Scripture, or for
and against the existence of the devil) but on what supposedly reliable
witnesses claimed to have seen. This means that the Gassner contro-
versy has a good claim to being one of the largest and noisiest argu-
ments of the whole German Enlightenment. It certainly illustrates
the fact that the German Enlightenment was much more concerned
with religious matters than was the case in France.
Understanding the German Enlightenment
How shall we understand this strange controversy? For one thing,

this religious and scientific controversy erupted at a moment when
publicity was becoming something like what it is today. Germany was
experiencing its second media revolution, if we count the invention of
printing and the pamphlets of the Reformation period as constituting
the first. Newspapers and journals, books and pamphlets flew off the
22
presses at a rate that no one had previously experienced, and new

rules had to be developed to cope with this novel situation.≤≠ But this
vehement exchange of tirade and polemic was also extraordinary be-
cause it involved both Protestants and Catholics. To a degree that we
may find hard to believe, Lutheran theologians and public commen-
tators generally left South German and Catholic affairs out of ac-
count, as if such predictably superstitious and ignorant regions could
present nothing of permanent importance to the cultivated Protes-
tant reader. Similarly Catholics in the South often paid closer atten-
tion to events and books in Italy or France than to what their German
brethren were doing and writing in the Protestant North. But in
Gassner’s case, this was not true. Careful observers and connoisseurs
of experimental method revealed that Gassner’s cures apparently
withstood scrupulous investigation. Enlightened Catholics and Prot-
estants took this as a serious provocation. Ordinary Protestants too
took notice of Gassner, flocking in disturbing numbers to Ellwangen
in order to be healed from ailments that their doctors and pastors
could not alleviate. And Pastor Lavater in Reformed Zurich remained
positively obsessed for several months with the possibility that in
Gassner he might find a carefully attested case of God’s direct inter-
vention into earthly affairs, just the sort of miraculous wonder that he
had been looking for and emphasizing since the late 1760s.≤∞ On this
point, Gassner was perhaps not so different from Mesmer as has often
been assumed. Mesmer too believed that animal magnetism was the
‘‘demonstrated presence of God’’ in the world.≤≤ But most impor-
tantly, Gassner’s cures involved the devil, and the 1770s were not so
far removed from the age of witch hunting that this circumstance
could be ignored. Enlightened commentators were swift to charge
that Gassner threatened to unleash a new wave of witchcraft trials,
and with Maria Anna Schwägelin suffering in the poor house of
Langenegg, accused of witchcraft in the jurisdiction of the prince
abbey of Kempten, they seemed to have a serious point. Recall that
Schwägelin was in fact convicted of witchcraft in the spring of 1775,
and that she only barely escaped execution.
The official Roman Ritual of 1614 itself proclaimed that certain
23
cases of demonic possession were the result of bewitchment, so that

belief in exorcism could reasonably lead some to look for the human
agents who had facilitated or willed a fall into demonic possession.≤≥
That accounts for the fact that some of Gassner’s fiercest critics con-
centrated on the supposed revival of witchcraft accusations and witch-
craft trials that Gassner’s exorcisms seemed sure to provoke, even
though Gassner himself did not promote or underwrite such accusa-
tions. It was, of course, difficult for Gassner’s supporters to deny that
witchcraft was at least theoretically a possibility even if its prosecution
had recently become hopelessly entangled in judicial uncertainties
and moral dilemmas.≤∂ So one of the tacit and sometimes explicit
issues in the Gassner controversy was witchcraft, whose conquest had
seemed to be the very symbol of the Enlightened age.
Thinking with Demons: The Grounds of Experience
Recent work on the history of witchcraft has shown that this crime
depended on a specific worldview, one in which most people (but not
all) were accustomed to ‘‘thinking with demons,’’ as a way to think
and converse about reality.≤∑ Many early modern Europeans found
witchcraft and demons a reasonable vehicle with which to wonder
about the nature of political and social authority, the limits of natural
causation, the origins of sin, the coming apocalypse, and the problems
of mental disorder. For centuries demonology comprised a set of
rational and coherent beliefs that helped many thinkers to integrate
the scholarly fields of history, medicine, law, politics, and theology. At
no time, however, did everyone agree about demons (or anything
else). We sometimes simplify the past by imagining that in bygone
days everyone thought alike, but that’s a modern conceit that rests on
pride combined with naiveté about the past. There were as many
disputes about demons as about almost any other topic two or three
or four hundred years ago, and many models of the world competed
for attention. And that takes only the discourse of the learned into
account. Among the poorly educated and illiterate, we sometimes
catch glimpses of assumptions and beliefs that the better educated
24
and better disciplined, the more orthodox in short, were appalled (or
sometimes titillated) to contemplate. Demons were often part of their
world too, but not always in the well-ordered and systematically con-
nected manner favored by intellectuals.≤∏
In our own day it is still common enough among evangelical and
charismatic groups to see the work of the devil in the troubles of this
world, in sickness, ‘‘accidents,’’ and in the supposed infidelity, immo-
rality, and godlessness of our times. But the urge for witch hunting
has died out in the modern West, even though the cry is easily audible
in many parts of Africa and Asia.≤π
Once witchcraft trials were dead, as they were in most corners of
the West by 1750, we may wonder how certain contemporaries of
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, of Edward Gibbon and
David Hume, could still bring themselves to see the devil in so many
unsuspected places. One answer is that we have often vastly overesti-
mated the supposed powers of the Hegelian Zeitgeist or the Foucaul-
tian epistème to shape the thoughts or undergird the assumptions of all
who happen to be living in the same time and place. Postmodernist
reflections have sometimes run the risk of suggesting that anything is
true if you think it is, that our concepts and beliefs are so powerful a
constituent of experience that we are usually unable to see ‘‘around’’
them, to experience anything objectively. This has been part of the
postmodern condition with its attack upon ‘‘the language of refer-
ence,’’ the notion that our words and ideas actually refer to realities
outside ourselves. Taken literally, the thought can paralyze scholar-
ship. But the interesting truth seems to be that most of us live simulta-
neously in various worlds of thought and words. Most of us are not
trapped in one verbal game. So, to arrive at provisional conclusions
amidst such confusions, it may help to recognize that groups of early
modern people (what we may recognize as early modern subcultures)
could entertain worldviews that diverged radically from one another,
paradigmatic attitudes toward the world that structured radically dif-
ferent early modern experiences even in the late eighteenth century
and made it difficult or even impossible for some people to speak to
others of what they knew. I think that these worlds were more than
25
just conceptually distinct, for it is also true that many conceptual

forms, many religious ideas, carry with them distinctive practices,
specific habits that are cultivated either in order that specific experi-
ences might come more easily and more predictably, or so that one
might, on the contrary, be readier to cope with them, suppress them,
or suffer them with greater equanimity.
It is, however, also true that our outlooks and our mental furniture
literally prefigure what we are able to experience. Although we proba-
bly can have some form of an experience even if we do not have the
verbal or mental categories with which to think and talk about it,
usually if we do not have the concepts and the words that go with the
concepts, we cannot well express or communicate what we experi-
ence. But without the words and the ideas, we essentially do not have
the full experience. In this way the concepts we think with, the words
we use, prefigure our possible experiences.
‘‘Thinking with demons,’’ as Europeans had done for centuries,
made so much sense in so many areas that the devil and his minions
were very hard to give up, even for those who had, often for practical
reasons, abolished witchcraft trials. And where the devil survived
as a concept and hence as a lived reality, there one continued to
find numbers of the demonically possessed. In eighteenth-century
Germany, this insight itself became controversial in the form that
Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750) posed it. The learned and
Enlightened Italian scholar noted that ‘‘it is strange that there are
only bewitched and possessed where there are exorcists.’’ The rem-
edy, therefore, seemed clear to Muratori’s enlightened readers. Get
rid of the exorcists, throw out their mental furniture, and the devil
and his effects would find somewhere else to reside.≤∫ To religious
conservatives, such a conclusion did not follow at all. If Muratori was
right, it merely showed that where there were no detection devices,
no exorcists, there no devils could be detected. And so Gassner’s cures
seemed to raise fundamental issues about the existence of spirits, the
continuation of miracles, the efficaciousness of the Roman Catholic
sacramentals and especially of exorcism, and the hitherto untested
powers of the human imagination.
26
Catholics and Protestants for whom the devil was still a biblical and
(therefore) a living reality did not have to stretch far to experience the
devil’s effects both outside their own bodies and even within. Belief in
the devil helped to activate him as a possible experience, and helped
make it easier for him to leave behind the telltale traces of specifi-
cally demonic activity. Indeed, we may agree that where people have
learned to get along without demons and the devil, the devil could
indeed still be at work. How would we know? But under such modern
conditions the devil rarely leaves behind the sulphurous odors and
frantic convulsions found in explicit cases of demonic possession.
The Enchanted World
Thus for some believers the world was ‘‘enchanted,’’ in the famous
image of Max Weber. It contained spirits of various sorts, occult
forces, and hidden dangers. Ordinary believers often held the view
(and acted on the view) that miracles regularly occurred in this world.
By this they meant that God or His saints intervened to rescue certain
favorites and that unexpected but happy outcomes were common
enough to be hoped for. To put oneself in this frame of mind and
simultaneously to put God in a giving frame of mind, one might go on
pilgrimage, say a specific round of prayers, or involve oneself in other
devotional exercises. From this premodern point of view it made little
sense to ask whether a miracle represented a breach in the otherwise
immutable laws of nature. Who had time to care about that when the
real point was that relief from mortal dangers might be only moments
away? And if an Enlightened critic objected that the ideas involved
here were unsubstantiated or unproved, many a person could retort
that he or she had experienced the demon, and had seen the wondrous
effects of exorcism with his or her own eyes. Then as now, that was a
nearly irrefutable argument.
Such an enchanted worldview describes pretty well the humble
Lutheran and Catholic supplicants who thronged to visit Gassner in
Klösterle, Ellwangen, Regensburg, and Sulzbach, and who hoped that
he might grant them just a gesture, a word of miraculous healing, a
27
compassionate glance. Sharing part of this worldview were many of

the learned but disgruntled ex-Jesuits after 1773, who hoped that
Gassner’s amazing and numerous exorcisms would serve to reveal a
world that was so full of evil spirits that only a traditional Catholic
priest, armed with the sacramentals of his church, had any chance at
all of effectively countering their attack. For the former Jesuits, relief
of immediate suffering was not the main point, but restoration of the
Jesuit Order was. This was certainly not the main concern of ordinary
Christians, but it can be seen that both Jesuits and ordinary believers
inhabited an ‘‘enchanted’’ world. In Gassner’s day, the chief strong-
hold of the ex-Jesuits was Augsburg, an imperial city with strong,
mutually distrustful populations of both Catholics and Lutherans.
The magistrates of Augsburg and the bishop of Augsburg were so
eager to suppress religious vituperation that long after 1773 the papal
decree dissolving the Jesuit Order was not even recognized. Ex-Jesuits
found a welcoming refuge there, and many of Gassner’s strongest
supporters lived, preached, or published in Augsburg.≤Ω
On the other side of the magical line, there were several sorts of
disenchanted. Among Lutherans and Reformed, for example, theolo-
gians had agreed for two hundred years that the age of miracles was
over. Yes, miracles had occurred in the years of the early church. Yes,
of course Jesus had worked real miracles and had cast out demons.
But those acts of Spirit and Power, those ‘‘signs,’’ ‘‘wonders,’’ and
‘‘mighty works,’’ had served the purpose of establishing Christ’s iden-
tity, and of building up the early church. They did not compete with
God’s Word, could not confirm new truths, and were, in the view of
Protestant theologians, no longer necessary now that Christians had
the benefit of Holy Scripture.≥≠ Of course, for most Protestants God
might continue to govern and steer his creation through the exercise
of his Providence, but the subtle point was usually that He did so by
mobilizing the ordinary forces of nature, not by breaking the natural
rules He had established for all time.≥∞
For traditional Roman Catholics, this was nonsense. On every side
they counted dramatic miracles of healing and rescue that had no
imaginable natural explanation. For many Catholic polemicists the
28
survival of miracles within the Roman Communion was all the proof
they needed that their church was true and that the various Protestant
‘‘sects’’ were bankrupt. By the end of the sixteenth century, however,
even Roman Catholics, at least the careful and scholarly among them,
had grown weary of Protestant charges that their priests were trick-
sters and that the Catholic laity were simply gullible. Too often what
had seemed like a miracle had turned out on closer inspection to be
fraud, deception, or simple mistake. And to prevent their position
from being ridiculed by hostile Protestants, they tightened up their
criteria for the truly miraculous. By the end of the sixteenth century
they had come to accept Thomas Aquinas’s strict view, which held
that ‘‘a miracle is defined as an event that happens outside the ordi-
nary processes of the whole of created nature.’’ And increasingly that
meant that miracles had to be tested carefully against all the possible
powers of nature. If a possible natural explanation could be found for
some amazing event, it was difficult to affirm with certainty that it was
nonetheless a miracle.≥≤
Along with these stricter notions of miracles, demonic possession
now came under much more stringent regulation; the Roman Ritual of
1614 essentially defined it as a condition that could have no natural
explanation. Demonic possession had become a sort of negative mira-
cle. This is a point that will occupy us more fully in a later chapter, but
here the point is simply that learned Protestants and Catholics of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came to regard miracles not as
wonders (things that make us wonder) but as events that could have
no natural explanation. Then the only question remained whether
they still occurred at all, and on that score learned Catholics trium-
phantly insisted that God did still intervene to break the ‘‘laws of
nature.’’ They were His to break, after all. But, logically enough, the
proof of any supposed miracle now required a profound knowledge of
nature and of experimental method.
During the eighteenth century still another position took shape
among the self-proclaimed partisans of Enlightenment: that miracles,
being breaches of the natural order, simply could not happen, or just as
tellingly, that our human resources are so feeble or so easily deceived
29
that we cannot tell if an amazing event actually breaches the rules of

nature.≥≥ Do we in fact know all the rules of the natural order? How
could we ever be sure that an event was thoroughly miraculous? No-
tice what had happened. As miracles became more amazing, more
wondrous, ever more impossible to explain, they also became less
common until they were virtually impossible. These were the results
of theological speculation and disagreement on a level that scarcely
concerned those people who saw the whole world as ‘‘enchanted.’’
But the strongly empirical claims of Hume, Voltaire, and Diderot
forced their Catholic opponents to become scrupulous scientists in
order to defend essentially empirical claims for the survival of mira-
cles. And all of that applies as well to what we have labeled ‘‘negative
miracles,’’ instances of demoniac possession.
There was yet another Enlightened view that gained ground in the
eighteenth century, one that did not pronounce upon miracles or
demoniac possession directly (or theoretically) but which declared all
events suspect if they promoted social disorder. As we will see in the
next chapter, these were the grounds on which Emperor Joseph II
ruled against Gassner’s healing campaigns. He needed no proof that
Gassner’s cures were false or that the demon possessed were in fact
naturally ill, for he had learned of the thousands of common people
who flocked to see Gassner to be healed by him. Thousands of com-
moners converging anywhere represented a frightening spectacle for
any absolute ruler. On grounds of good order alone, certain Enlight-
ened political thinkers and rulers decided that Gassner and his exor-
cisms simply had to stop.
The Meanings of Experience
These various views expressed in the late eighteenth century cre-

ated the basis for strikingly various experiences. For some, Gassner’s
test exorcisms served to prove to the suffering supplicant that he or
she harbored one or more demons; and onlookers often drew the
same conclusion. But for others this was a flatly impossible conclu-
sion. For some petitioners, any relief from daily misery was miracu-
30
lous, although Gassner himself was careful not to claim the power of
working proper miracles. For ordinary Germans this was not an ob-
vious distinction since the word Wunder could mean either miracle or
marvel. For some Catholics the promiscuous use of exorcism gave
Protestants and the Enlightened a broad brush they could use to tar
the Catholic faith with charges of superstition and ignorance, but for
other Catholics the enthusiastic throngs of supplicants constituted a
major social problem.
From the other side of the confessional divide, Pastor Johann Kas-
par Lavater frankly hoped that demonic possession could be proved,
for that would constitute for him proof of the unseen world, proof
that the desiccated, materialistic world presented by the followers of
Spinoza was hopelessly inadequate to the task of accounting for life as
we live it. Lavater and some other Protestants hoped that Gassner
would be the proof of God’s continuing interventions that would put
the Enlightenment to flight.
For still other Protestants, as we have seen, Gassner represented
the very incarnation of dangerous folly, the revival of bewitchings and
the spark in a powder keg that might lead to renewed witchcraft trials.
For them, Gassner represented the risks that emerged when one did
not truly understand Scripture and took literally what God had in-
tended as beautiful parables.
These are matters that will occupy our attention in the coming
chapters, but it should now be clear why certain believers in the 1770s
could find themselves convinced that they were themselves possessed
by the devil, and why that claim seemed ludicrous to others. The
stage was set for a gigantic and perhaps irresolvable dispute, one that
bears a striking similarity to many of the disputes of our own day, in
which an initial problem often is the failure to attend with any care to
what our interlocutors are actually saying. To grasp how and why
Gassner’s religious revival erupted where it did, however, we must
also attend to the politics of the ecclesiastical states within the Holy
Roman Empire, states that provided, at least for a time, a cultural
niche for his ideas and practices.
31
two
A NICHE IN THE INCUBATOR: ECCLESIASTICAL
POLITICS AND THE EMPIRE
Gassner and the movements that erupted around him are more
important and more instructive matters for the ecclesiastical history
of our times than most of my readers will have suspected.
—Christian Wilhelm Franz Walch, Neueste Religionsgeschichte
Johann Joseph Gassner found himself and his religious movement

embroiled in a web of tense relations involving many of the most
powerful Catholic forces in the Holy Roman Empire. He was origi-
nally doubted and expelled by the cardinal prince bishop of Con-
stance, Franz Konrad von Rodt; favored and supported by the prince
bishop of Regensburg, Anton Ignaz von Fugger; blocked by the elec-
tor of Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph, but supported by the counts of
Hohenlohe and by Duke Ludwig Eugen of Württemberg, brother of
reigning Duke Karl Eugen; criticized by the archbishops of Salzburg
and Prague; and finally stopped by Emperor Joseph II and by Pope
Pius VI. To understand this constellation of conflicting forces, we
must grasp the complex nature of the Holy Roman Empire and of
German Catholicism in the late eighteenth century.
The Holy Roman Empire has seemed both weak and ridiculous to
those who expected it to perform like a nation-state. In the last gener-
ation, however, inasmuch as nations appear to cause at least as many
problems as they solve, historians have studied afresh the hidden
strengths and discreet charms of the empire, virtues that allowed it to
survive and even flourish, in a sense, throughout the ‘‘age of absolut-
ism.’’∞ With a vibrant image, Mack Walker once described the Holy
Roman Empire of the eighteenth century as an incubator, a loose
federation of extremely diverse members that served to shelter and
protect each constituent part from the designs of more powerful or
more numerous neighbors.≤ So long as most members found living in
this cocoon more secure than taking their chances as the clients of
32
A NICHE IN THE INCUBATOR
one or another powerful patron-state, the empire functioned to keep

cities and states of various strengths in rough balance. Walker’s image
helps the modern reader understand why the empire, although it did
not fit neatly into the Aristotelian political categories, actually func-
tioned and won the loyalty of many. Until the late eighteenth century
it seemed to protect the interests of the numerous smaller principali-
ties and cities from the ambitions of the overmighty. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, however, it was becoming clear that Prussia
represented one such threat, but others were not far behind, espe-
cially Bavaria and Austria. Meanwhile the Saxon dukes had converted
to Catholicism and become the kings of Poland while the dukes of
Braunschweig had assumed the throne of Britain. All of these powers
seemed increasingly willing to sacrifice imperial institutions in order
to strengthen their own territorial or international power. Napo-
leonic armies dealt the final blow to the empire, seizing territories on
the left bank of the Rhine and forcing the secularization of hundreds
of church lands and the consolidation of secular principalities in the
famous final decree of the imperial deputation of 1803, the Reichs-
deputationshauptschluss. Although secularizations of church lands had
been in process ever since the late Middle Ages and had accelerated
during the Reformation, and although further secularizations had
been discussed among the German Catholic powers ever since the
1740s, even keen observers often failed to recognize just how funda-
mental the ecclesiastical states were to the functioning of the Holy
Roman Empire. With their disappearance in 1803 the empire was no
longer governable, at least by a Catholic emperor, and so it was no
wonder that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation col-
lapsed entirely just three years later, after an existence of about a
thousand years.≥
Although the empire survived as an incubator or cocoon for the
myriad small and smaller members, those images do not do full jus-
tice to the tangled tensions within the web, conflicting interests that
pulled in different directions. Nowhere was this more evident than
among the ecclesiastical states of Germany. The modern reader, es-
pecially the American reader, may have difficulty understanding just
33
how important and peculiar the prelates of the Holy Roman Empire
were. We have perhaps grown so used to the separation of church and
state, or perhaps so accustomed to think that the English, French, and
Spanish monarchies provided the norm for all of Europe, that we
badly underestimate the role of ecclesiastical princes in the odd con-
federation that constituted the empire.
The chief peculiarity of the Catholic Church in the Holy Roman
Empire was that its hierarchy (its bishops and archbishops) were si-
multaneously heads of their dioceses or provinces but also major
princes of the empire with extensive lands and secular rights of rule
(including taxation, military conscription, legislation, jurisdiction
both civil and criminal, and responsibility for all manner of local
administration). This mixture of ecclesiastical and secular roles had
characterized the medieval German monarchy along with much of
the rest of Western Europe, but the western monarchies had long
since curbed and curtailed the secular powers of their clergy, while in
the German lands these glorious and vainglorious potentates had
retained their strength.∂ It has been estimated that at the time of the
Reformation roughly one-third of the German lands were under the
secular control of ecclesiastical princes. That percentage had been
reduced in the century after Luther, but the grand baroque palaces
and gold-encrusted chapels of even minor prelates in South Germany
reveal how powerful and self-confident they still were.∑ In southern
and western Germany they numbered twenty bishoprics and about
forty imperial abbeys or other sorts of ecclesiastical foundations with
a population of perhaps 2,650,000, a number that includes something
(opposite page) Map 1. Catholic Ecclesiastical Administration of Central

Europe in the Late 18th Century. Before a series of reforms of the 1780s, the
administrative districts of the Catholic Church in German-speaking Europe
did not correspond at all to the political constituents of the Holy Roman
Empire. There was, for example, no diocese or archdiocese of Bavaria or
Austria. Similarly, the provinces of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier did not
correspond to any one principality.
34
like 70,000 regular and secular clergy.∏ These were the lands in which
Gassner’s healing campaign and religious movement took root. In
fact, he moved easily from one ecclesiastical state to another, almost
never residing long in any secular principality. He depended on favor-
able prelates, who give him shelter, advertised his successes, and in
the case of the prince bishop of Regensburg, raised him to the rank of
councillor.
The lands of an imperial princely prelate never corresponded to his
diocese or archiepiscopal province, moreover, so that the same man
might rule ecclesiastically over one district (his diocese) but as a secu-
lar prince over quite a different principality. At the end of the eigh-
teenth century, for example, the bishop of Passau personally con-
trolled a little territory of only 134 square kilometers (about 52 square
miles), squeezed between Bavaria and Austria, but he oversaw a di-
ocese of 42,000 square kilometers (about 16,400 square miles) that
reached from northern Bavaria to the borders of Hungary. Because of
these dual roles, the German bishops and archbishops were almost
always members of the high nobility and often enough the brothers of
ruling dukes or counts. Although they were elected to their offices by
cathedral chapters or other corporate bodies, the most powerful fami-
lies established ecclesiastical dynasties, such as the Wittelsbachs of
Bavaria (who for generations had a lock on the electoral archbishopric
of Cologne), but this is true also of smaller families such as the Schön-
borns of electoral Mainz and Franconia (who for a century dominated
the bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg, among others). This ar-
rangement, often simply referred to as the Reichskirche (the imperial
church) guaranteed that the German Catholic bishops would be far
more sensitive to secular political considerations than most of their
(Opposite page) Map 2. Ecclesiastical Principalities in the Southern Holy

Roman Empire. The map shows how dense were the ecclesiastical
principalities in the South (prince bishops, imperial abbeys, and the lands of
various other ecclesiastical bodies). The heads of these lands ruled not as
ecclesiastical administrators but as secular princes.
37
fellow prelates in France, Italy, or Spain. Many were grand secular

princes first and only secondarily churchmen, and so many of them
appointed suffragan bishops to attend to spiritual matters in their
dioceses. The most distinguished of these potentates were the arch-
bishops of Cologne, Mainz, Trier, Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg.
The first three of these were so emphatically charged with secular
responsibilities that they were imperial electors, who shared (along
with the princes of Saxony, Brandenburg, Prussia, the Rhine Palati-
nate, Bavaria, and Hanover) the task of electing each Holy Roman
emperor and of constituting the first chamber of the ‘‘perpetual’’
imperial diet, which had been meeting as a standing committee in
Regensburg on the Danube since 1663.π
The archbishop of Mainz was also the chancellor (or ‘‘archchancel-
lor’’) of the empire, second only to the emperor in importance and
(through a deputy) head of the imperial diet meeting in Regensburg.
The huge province of Mainz, the most extensive of all the German
provinces, extended from Hamburg in the north to Chur on the
Upper Rhine in the South, in a central swath about two hundred
miles wide. It included the dioceses of Chur, Constance, Augsburg,
Würzburg, Bamberg, and Strasbourg in the south (along with others
in the north) and was, therefore, nominally in charge of most of the
territory in which Gassner was active. The diocese of Regensburg,
however, was subordinate to the archbishop of Salzburg, whose ex-
tensive province included the bishoprics of Freising, Passau, Brixen
(Bressanone), and even (until 1722) Vienna.
In addition to this territorial hierarchy governing the secular clergy
of the empire and overseeing the thousands of parishes to which most
Catholic laity belonged, the Catholic Church in the German lands
included a wide array of imperial abbeys, imperial convents, and mili-
tary orders (the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of St. John, or of
Malta), and ‘‘princely provostries’’ (Fürstpropsteien) of Ellwangen and
Berchtesgaden. Many of these ecclesiastical lands had secured exemp-
tions from the jurisdiction of their bishops and made up a series of
jurisdictionally autonomous islands, ultimately under the control of
Rome but often free to run their own affairs, at least so long as they
38
did not call too much attention to themselves. A good example was
the imperial abbey of Salem, where Gassner had achieved some of his
first major successes outside his own parish. Eight miles north of the
Lake of Constance and just east of the small imperial city of Über-
lingen, the abbey had survived the Reformation as a Cistercian mon-
astery but had to struggle with the secular counts of Heiligenberg and
with the electors of Bavaria to retain its scattered lands and then with
the bishops of Constance regarding Salem’s jurisdictional exemptions
and ceremonial pretensions.∫ To strengthen Salem’s hand against lo-
cal rivals, the abbey sometimes flirted with joining the scattered Swa-
bian lands of ‘‘Anterior Austria’’ (Vorderösterreich), but in the 1760s
and 1770s Prince Abbot Anselm Schwab (reg. 1746–1778) appealed
directly to Pope Clement XIII, who sent the head of his papal archive
to investigate trumped-up claims of misconduct and mismanage-
ment. Despite a victory in 1761 for Abbot Anselm, the prince bishop
of Constance, Cardinal Franz Konrad von Rodt (reg. 1751–1775)
continued his efforts to depose the abbot and to annul Salem’s liber-
ties.Ω Such tensions were common in Catholic Germany, where ex-
emptions and overlapping claims made controversy almost unavoid-
able.∞≠ When some of Gassner’s first German successes were recorded
in Salem, it should not surprise us to learn, the cardinal prince bishop
of Constance immediately intervened, demanded an investigation,
and determined to expel Gassner from his diocese, an order that
Gassner was slow to obey.
Another source of difficulty for the Reichskirche and its bishops
was the steady exploitation by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
popes of permanent nunciatures. Although these offices began as dip-
lomatic representatives of the Holy See, by the eighteenth century
nuncios often had powers that went well beyond simple representa-
tion. They had wide administrative powers and were charged with
granting dispensations, undertaking visitations, and clarifying doc-
trine, thus competing directly with the German archbishops. No
wonder the archbishops of the empire reacted bitterly to what they
regarded as an invasion of their proper rights and duties.∞∞ A focal
point for this resentment exploded in 1763 in the work of a certain
39
‘‘Justinus Febronius,’’ the pseudonym of Johann Nikolaus von Hont-

heim (1701–1790), the suffragan bishop of Trier. In his vehemently
anti-papal book, De statu ecclesiæ et legitima potestate Romani Pontificis
Liber singularis ad reuniendos dissidentes in religione christianos compositus
(On the State of the Church and the Legitimate Power of the Roman
Pontiff, Written for the Purpose of Reuniting the Dissidents of the
Christian Religion), Hontheim urged a conciliarism that would allow
the creation of a German Catholic national church and the recon-
ciliation of differences with the Protestant churches. The pope would
be reduced to nothing more than a benign administrator and, primus
inter pares, charged with guaranteeing the unity of the church but not
seen as the final arbiter of matters of faith. So radical a conclusion,
urged by a suffragan bishop, did not spring to life without parents.
Indeed, it has become common to place Hontheim in a movement
that has been called the ‘‘Catholic revolution of ideas’’ in the eigh-
teenth century.∞≤ Building upon the recent historical recovery and
study of fifteenth-century ecclesiastical documents (especially from
the Council of Basel of 1438, the Viennese Concordat of 1448, and
the regular lists of complaints or Gravamina, ca. 1450–1521, of the
German nation against the papacy), a coalition of German canon
lawyers, Jansenists, and Catholic reformers hoped to duplicate the
successes of the French kings, whose Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges
(1438) and Concordat of 1516 had established the French monarch’s
right to appoint all French bishops.∞≥ In this way, as Peter Hersche,
Volker Pitzer, and Karl Otmar von Aretin have emphasized, Catholic
reformers hoped to create a national Catholic Church.∞∂ Of course
these hopes depended upon regarding the confessional divide in Ger-
many as purely political and did not adequately take either the theo-
logical differences of the learned or the deeply ingrained mutual
religious aversions of ordinary people into account. As a practical
matter, ideas of confessional reconciliation were premature at best,
but among high councils of state, Febronian ideas continued to fer-
ment for decades after Hontheim’s forced recantation of 1778.
During the 1770s and 1780s the German archbishops applied their
40
Gallican or episcopalist ideas to the task of curbing the papal nuncia-

tures, not only those already in existence (especially the nunciature of
Cologne) but the special office in Munich, planned by Prince Elector
Karl Theodor in order to produce a centralized church for Bavaria in
the mid-1780s. We have already noted that dioceses rarely coincided
with territorial borders in the empire, and this was especially true in
Bavaria, whose various parts were subject to several bishops, most of
them with seats outside Bavaria. To establish his own Bavarian na-
tional church, the elector appealed to Pope Pius VI and received a
nunciature to act as a sort of archbishop for all the Wittelsbach lands.
He also enlisted the support of Emperor Joseph II, who had just
reformed and rationalized the diocesan borders of Austria (creating
two new bishoprics in Linz and St. Pölten while decisively enlarging
the diocesan boundaries of Vienna, Gurk, and Seckau), but these
measures threatened to disrupt the whole Reichskirche by bringing
the Catholic Church firmly within the orbit of territorial politics.∞∑
It is a measure of the complexity of the German ecclesiastical scene
that the bitter opposition of the archbishops to the Bavarian nun-
ciature and their passionate support for Febronian politics met with
little support among the German bishops. Even though Febronius-
Hontheim had argued for an episcopalism that seemed to promise
more independence and authority for the German bishops, they were
as a group far more worried about the power of the archbishops than
about the pope in Rome. Such proposed reforms were even less popu-
lar among the imperial abbeys, which depended upon papal exemp-
tions for their autonomy and dignity.∞∏ Gassner’s movement reflects
and illuminates these tensions too, for he succeeded best among those
Catholic territories least closely controlled by the archbishops: the
tiny county of Wolfegg (where Gassner had healed Maria Bernardina,
Countess Truchsess von Wolfegg und Friedberg) and especially im-
perial abbeys and convents (notably the princely abbeys of Kemp-
ten and Salem), the imperial provostry of Ellwangen, along with
the proud bishoprics of Regensburg, Freising, and Eichstätt. The
bishop of Constance was skeptical from the start, and in the end, both
41
Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo of Salzburg and Antonín Petr

Prichovic of Prague issued pastoral letters warning about Gassner’s
superstitious and disorderly excesses.
Catholic reform touched not only the location of political power in
the church. In addition to the diocesan reforms mentioned, both
Joseph II and his mother Maria Theresa (reg. 1740–1780) had issued
orders as early as the 1750s sharply curbing the influence of the
Jesuits over education and censorship (1759), limiting the number of
feast days and the wealth of the monasteries. In the late 1760s Joseph
raised the minimum age at which one could join religious orders,
dissolved small and ‘‘useless’’ monasteries, taxed the clergy, abolished
monastic and episcopal prisons, limited the gift of lands to the church,
curbed pilgrimages and processions, improved the education of and
increased the numbers of the parish clergy, while generally subor-
dinating the church to the state.∞π It appeared to an earlier generation
that Joseph was following a thoroughly secular or even a rationalist
Enlightenment program, but the recent work of Beales and others has
made it crystal clear that Joseph saw himself as a deeply religious
Catholic reformer. His zeal for the state and for limiting the power
of both the pope and the monasteries was matched by an almost
evangelical zeal for improving the education and effectiveness of the
priesthood.
What these revisions show is that Reform Catholicism had deep
roots in Austria and elsewhere in the empire.∞∫ Some statesmen were
moved by late Jansenism to promote a strict moralism, an intensely
inward religious worship, and a theology of grace at the expense of
works (even at the expense of church rituals and ceremonies). Those
inspired by Febronius urged a dramatic expansion of the rights of
bishops and strict limits on the papacy in order to create a German
national church that might even reconcile the dissenting Protestant
churches. Others agreed with Joseph II that force should play no role
in religion and that therefore the toleration of Protestants and even of
Jews would have benefits for true religion (Catholicism in their view)
as well as for the state (by tolerating rather than expelling industrious
workers).
42
It was, of course, one thing to decree changes from above and quite
another to realize them on the ground. As Marc Forster has empha-
sized, Catholicism was not uniform throughout the German lands,
and the territorially splintered German Southwest was perhaps pecu-
liarly resistant to orders from above. Ordinary villagers and towns-
people were usually devoted to their parish priests, to their local
pilgrimage shrines, and to their local abbeys. In this world the thor-
ough reforms ordered by the Emperor Joseph II and his ministers
met with widespread popular opposition, except for Joseph’s plans to
provide new parishes. Otherwise, ordinary Catholics in this region
resisted the closure of their shrines, convents, monasteries, and con-
fraternities, and they worked with surprising tenacity and success to
retain feast days, processions, and pilgrimages.∞Ω Especially where a
mixture of Protestants was found among the population, as in many
parts of the German Southwest, humble Catholic parishioners found
themselves feeling ever more profoundly Catholic. Often these vil-
lagers were enthusiastic backers of both the Jesuits and the even more
numerous Capuchins, from whom they received religious instruction
and preaching. In Upper Swabia this was a piety that did not respond
well to orders from bishops or secular princes; instead these ordinary
Catholics were bound up in a dense sacral landscape and often felt
closer to the imperial abbeys of their region than to diocesan admin-
istrators, perhaps precisely because they were not so bound up in a
centralized hierarchy, not fully obedient to the reforms of Trent and
the episcopal decrees that tried to impose them.≤≠ It makes sense that
Gassner’s first extramural successes should have come in the German
Southwest, even though the cardinal bishop of Constance did what he
could to curb and discredit his healing campaign.
Even more decisive steps were taken by other Catholic authorities.
After Sterzinger received Gassner’s little book in October of 1774, he
brought it to the attention of Count von Sprezzi (Spretti), head of the
Bavarian ecclesiastical council ( geistlicher Rat), who immediately for-
bade its sale in Bavaria.≤∞ The authorities in the diocese of Augsburg
also forbade Gassner to work there, for Sterzinger noted that even in
Ellwangen Gassner had had to work his ‘‘operations’’ in a special
43
house that was exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Augs-
burg.≤≤ Indeed, in a letter dated 1 December 1774 the cathedral pro-
vost of Augsburg notified the authorities in Ellwangen that Elector
Klemens Wenzeslaus, archbishop of Trier but also bishop of Augs-
burg, had forbidden Gassner to enter the diocese of Augsburg.≤≥ The
skeptical elector was clearly annoyed that Gassner was exploiting
exempt properties in Ellwangen to evade his general obligation to
abstain from exorcizing until he had the permission of the appropri-
ate diocesan bishop. He explicitly warned his sister-in-law, the elec-
tress of Saxony, against seeking the help of Gassner for herself or for
her depressed son, Prince Karl of Saxony.≤∂
Opinion was sharply divided at the electoral court in Munich, how-
ever, and in particular the ‘‘Protomedicus’’ and privy councillor Jo-
hann Anton von Wolter was eager to see if Gassner might heal his
daughter, the Baroness von Erdt, who suffered from epilepsy and
dizziness. Believers also included the court physician Johann Nepo-
muk Anton Leuthner. As a result of these bitterly contentious opin-
ions, the elector of Bavaria issued a decree dated 13 February 1775
forbidding noisy religious discussions and threatening punishment
for those who ridiculed the Catholic faith or its personnel.≤∑ At about
the same time, however, Max Joseph forbade Gassner to enter Ba-
varian territory because he was eager to forestall unrest and religious
excitement. He therefore became enraged when four professors at
‘‘his’’ university in Ingolstadt undertook on their own initiative to
investigate and confirm Gassner’s claims (27 August 1775). One pro-
fessor from each of the then accepted academic disciplines (philoso-
phy, medicine, theology, and law) had traveled to Regensburg and
observed Gassner’s ‘‘operations’’ for two days, and had come away
fully persuaded.≤∏ Elector Max Joseph sent a stiff letter in December
demanding an explanation and warning that the reputation of the
university was at stake. With obedient alacrity the four professors
retreated and meekly claimed that they had not intended to publish
their views, and certainly had not meant to involve the university in
their claims. The elector sternly directed the professors to give up
their interference in the ‘‘all too exciting’’ Gassner affair.
44
Gassner had encountered skeptical lay administrators before, start-

ing as early as 1767 in the Vorarlberg, where the local governor,
Landvogt Baron von Sternbach, had complained to the bishop of
Chur about Gassner’s ‘‘superstitious’’ dealings; but after an investiga-
tion the bishop had taken Gassner under his protection.≤π The au-
tonomy and exemptions of the bishop of Regensburg also sheltered
Gassner from civil disapproval in that city. In vain the city magistrates
tried in July of 1775 to stem the tide of poor, sick, and ‘‘suspicious’’
persons who were sneaking into the city without official permission.≤∫
Indeed, bishop Anton Ignaz delighted in showing off his wonder
worker to the assembled Catholic delegates to the imperial diet,
which sat in permanent session in Regensburg. The constitution of
the Holy Roman Empire guaranteed that if Gassner remained in
good odor with his immediate ecclesiastical superior, he was safe
enough, at least so long as the highest authorities were content to
ignore him.
From the beginning of 1775 storm flags were beginning to fly from
the towers of the Austrian administration, but by the time the Frei-
burg authorities of Anterior Austria (Vorderösterreich, the discon-
nected Habsburg lands mainly in southwestern Germany) began to
make the necessary inquiries, Gassner was no longer in their territory,
and so it was no longer up to them to pursue the matter.≤Ω Therefore
the imperial government in Vienna took over the investigation. In
March of 1775 Chancellor Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz asked for a
‘‘thorough report’’ on Gassner from Freiherr von Ried, the imperial
delegate to the Swabian-Franconian circle in Offenburg. But Ried
was too far distant to have had any personal contact with the healer,
and could only report that from what he had been able to learn,
opinions were divided about him. From accounts concerning those
whom Gassner had healed, Ried could report that many seemed to
have reverted to their former conditions. By the time Gassner moved
on to Regensburg at the beginning of summer 1775, the Empress
Maria Theresa was ready to demand her own investigation; she or-
dered a commission sent to Regensburg including the emperor’s per-
sonal physician, Anton de Haen, and Freiherr Gottfried van Swieten,
45
the son of a previous imperial physician, Gerhard van Swieten. The

empress was stacking the deck, for both Anton de Haen and Gott-
fried van Swieten were well known for their opposition to ideas of
witchcraft.
Probably as a result of his investigative visit to Regensburg, impe-
rial physician de Haen (1704–1776) worked an analysis of the opera-
tions of Gassner into his elaborate inquiry into miracles, which was
published just as he lay dying in 1776. In general the Jansenist physi-
cian believed in the possibility of miracles and magic, but Gasssner
was another matter.≥≠ He conceded that many troubled patients prob-
ably benefited simply from the change of climate and of diet in-
volved in traveling to the exorcist, and that some just needed a break
from domestic worries. It also seemed entirely possible that Gassner
possessed secret knowledge of occult natural forces, of ‘‘sympathy,’’
and magnetism. It was entirely conceivable that the wonder worker
achieved beneficial effects on certain hypersensitive individuals by
means of strange manipulations. It also seemed to Dr. de Haen that
most of the ‘‘healed’’ had suffered from chronic but periodic ailments,
and so a real test required ample time to determine whether a sup-
posed cure was permanent rather than merely a calm interval in a
natural disorder. ‘‘If Gassner’s defenders stubbornly maintain that
Gassner’s cures are indisputable, achieved by no natural forces and
not by deceit, then I would have to attribute Gassner’s wonderworks
(portenta opera) to the devil for they cannot be attributed to God or
to natural powers.’’≥∞ In the enlightened and Jansenist atmosphere
of Vienna it did little good to make the theologically accurate but
overly subtle point that Gassner had never claimed to be working
miracles, even if the effects he achieved were supernatural. The exor-
cist claimed he was only using the ordinary powers granted to every
priest, but the point was pointless.
Demonic possession was under general assault among the intellec-
tuals of the Habsburg capital. Even though Christoph Anton Cardi-
nal Migazzi, the prince archbishop of Vienna, was a vehement enemy
of Enlightenment theology, a supporter of the Jesuits, and an op-
ponent of most of the Emperor Joseph II’s ecclesiastical reforms, he
46
also opposed what he saw as ‘‘superstition.’’ In June of 1758 he had

published a decree condemning the treatment of natural illnesses as
if they were bewitchments or demonic possessions. Henceforward
there were to be no exorcisms and no investigations to determine if an
illness was the result of witchcraft or possession without his own
written permission.≥≤ Obviously Bishop Anton Ignaz and Gassner
could not expect a warm reception even from such a thorough oppo-
nent of the Enlightenment as Cardinal Migazzi.
Considering the expressed attitudes of both Maria Theresa and
Joseph as well as the intellectual climate in the Viennese court, it is
not surprising that in November of 1775 Emperor Joseph II ordered
Bishop Anton Ignaz to banish Gassner from Regensburg and to stop
‘‘all of his exorcistic treatments that have excited such a sensation.’’≥≥
We obtain another glimpse of the emperor’s personal view from a
letter that Gassner sent to a clerical friend in Vienna on 12 December
1775, in which Gassner expressed his disappointment that despite his
friend’s efforts to represent his controversial exorcisms favorably to
the highest personages at court, a critical article had just appeared in
the newspaper, the Wiener Diarium (2 December 1775), to the effect
that the cardinal archbishop, acting on the command of the emperor,
had just ordered Gassner to be exiled from Regensburg. Secretly
Gassner admitted to his friend that he knew the emperor had person-
ally ordered his bishop to dismiss him ‘‘because my ‘operations’ in
Regensburg have caused unrest among the councillors, and in my
[new] parish I won’t cause any more trouble.’’≥∂ By early December
the bishop, after dragging his feet, had finally bowed to the will of
the emperor, finding in the inconspicuous parish of Pondorf a suit-
able refuge for his embattled exorcist. He insisted, however, that one
could not prevent Gassner from continuing to perform occasional
exorcisms.
Despite the emperor’s order, Gassner was still residing in Regens-
burg more than two months later when his bishop petitioned Cardi-
nal Migazzi in Vienna on his behalf. On 9 February 1776 Bishop
Anton Ignaz wrote requesting that Migazzi try to convey a more
favorable view of the Gassner affair to the imperial court in Vienna.
47
In support of his petition, he claimed that he (Fugger) and four other

bishops who had witnessed Gassner’s amazing cures could testify to
the exorcist’s sterling character, to the orthodoxy of his rituals, and to
the total absence of fraud. He might have added the prince abbot of
Kempten as well.≥∑ ‘‘I therefore as bishop regard Gassner’s system as
most valuable because it confounds the blind wisdom of the world,
puts free thought to shame, revives the dying faith of many, strength-
ens the reputation and power of the Church, and spreads the healing
force of the most holy name of Jesus (which is so abundantly com-
mended to us by Holy Scripture) ever more to the honor of God and
to the welfare of our neighbor, as we do really see from daily expe-
rience.’’ No better statement could have summarized the sense in
which Gassner’s movement represented a genuine religious revival,
but these were hard times for revivals. Migazzi replied with cool-
ness that in this matter he could do nothing, but that the bishop of
Regensburg should send Gassner to Rome, where he might persuade
the pope of his methods, which were, he said, ‘‘causing quite a stir’’ in
Vienna. In a separate note, Migazzi recorded that he had personally
taken the matter up with the emperor, but that ‘‘His Majesty had told
me such unpleasant things’’ that he did not wish to depress the bishop
of Regensburg by telling him all the details. It would be better to go
to Rome with a view to persuading the Holy See of Gassner’s ortho-
doxy.≥∏ Before sending this sensitive letter to Regensburg, Migazzi
showed it to Maria Theresa, who remarked that ‘‘there was much to
criticize in the bishop’s letter, but nothing in your answer, which is
fine.’’ Obviously Maria Theresa and her son Joseph were of one mind
concerning Gassner. The continuing efforts of Count Karl Albert von
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on Gassner’s behalf also came to nothing,
even though they attest to the attraction Gassner had for some of the
high nobility of southern Germany.≥π
What we have here looks almost like a game of chess, in which var-
ious religious and political authorities used whatever specific rights,
powers, and exemptions they enjoyed to counter the moves of their
opponents. At first Gassner won the backing of the bishop of Chur
and used his protection to counter scattered clerical complaints about
48
his practice in Klösterle and to beat back skeptics in the secular admin-
istrative district of Vorarlberg (the Landvogt von Bludenz, Baron von
Sternbach) and in the Anterior Austrian administration in Freiburg.≥∫
Later Gassner exploited the rights of the tiny counties and the various
exemptions provided the imperial abbeys of Upper Swabia, despite
the displeasure of the cardinal bishop of Constance, in order to unfold
his arsenal of spiritual cures.≥Ω The bishopric of Augsburg set up a
barrier to the east, and the elector of Bavaria kept him out of Bavaria,
but Gassner found in the bishop of Regensburg and in the exemptions
provided the princely provostry of Ellwangen a second major theater
of operations. The bishops of Eichstätt and Freising firmed up Gass-
ner’s political strength in that region. Initial inquiries of the Austrian
authorities came too slowly to catch Gassner in their lands, but by the
time Gassner moved with his bishop to Regensburg, Emperor Joseph
II and Empress Maria Theresa were ready to act decisively to investi-
gate and to condemn Gassner’s tumultuous procedures. They were in
no position to condemn him theologically, but they could order the
bishop of Regensburg to banish the priest to a quiet little parish,
where he would no longer disturb the peace of the empire.
In the months after the emperor had moved against Gassner, mighty
ecclesiastical lords issued their own warnings and prohibitions. The
problem was not only one of stopping Gassner but of stopping his
growing band of disciples and imitators. Nowhere was this more
evident than in the archdiocese of Prague, where several priests had
begun to heal the sick by publicly employing the name of Jesus. On
6 December 1775 Archbishop Antonín Petr Prichovic issued a pas-
toral letter, one in which Ferdinand Sterzinger was deeply involved.
For that reason the letter was full of characteristically sharp theologi-
cal objections to the methods and theories of Gassner. In addition to
the normal admonitions against exorcizing in public, ignoring the
exact guidelines of the Rituale Romanum, and acting without the per-
mission of the bishop, therefore, this official warning claimed that it
was truly an insult to the honor of Christ to suggest that his holy
name could cure only ‘‘unnatural’’ illnesses but not natural disorders.
Such a distinction might call into question the very miracles Christ
49
had performed in his lifetime and would spread an unjustified fear

among ordinary Christians that they were possessed (or perhaps ‘‘cir-
cumsessed’’) by devils, when in fact their ailments were thoroughly
natural. Even worse was Gassner’s conclusion that those who could
not be helped were lacking in faith. The archbishop also argued that it
was nothing more than an excuse and a subterfuge when Gassner and
his followers taught that those ‘‘who tended to depression, anger, or
other natural passions either could not be healed or else easily fell
back into their prior disabilities.’’∂≠ It was, moreover, a harsh affliction
for suffering patients to tell them that their relapses were due to their
own sinful attitudes. A truly God-given act of healing would be per-
manent. This pastoral letter left little doubt that Gassner and his
followers or imitators were not to be tolerated throughout the prov-
ince of Prague.∂∞
In the province of Salzburg the ruling archbishop was a Jansenist
Febronian, Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula von Colloredo, a man
who had already made a reputation for himself as a vehement re-
former in the mold of Joseph II, a steady opponent of popular exor-
cisms and blessings.∂≤ Already in 1774 and 1775 he had issued orders
to his diocesan priests to dissuade parishioners from seeking help
from Gassner. On 5 January 1776 Colloredo followed the lead of the
archbishop of Prague and issued his own pastoral letter against ‘‘cer-
tain exorcists’’ (without naming Gassner) in his archdiocese. For him
Gassner’s system was pure and dangerous nonsense. The use of ‘‘pro-
bative exorcisms’’ had been often and rightly condemned, for they
only added needless tortures to those who were already suffering.
Moreover, such a usage was a serious abuse of Jesus’ name. Those
supposedly healed by such exorcisms regularly fell back into their
former conditions, no better than before. So priests and teachers
should persuade ordinary people that the devil did not actually have
the enlarged powers that Gassner and his imitators ascribed to him.
‘‘In the light of our times, it was no longer acceptable,’’ the arch-
bishop declared, to ascribe whatever one cannot explain to demons or
miracles.∂≥
Of course Rome represented the last word in such matters, and
50
both Gassner’s supporters and his opponents appealed to the curia to

settle things once and for all. At first, in the summer of 1775, Pope
Pius VI took notice of the Gassner affair but did not decide anything.
Without analyzing the diplomatic jockeying for position and advan-
tage in Rome, we can merely note that on 20 April 1776 the pope
finally wrote to the bishop of Regensburg in answer to his appeal for
Gassner. He conceded, of course, that exorcisms in and of themselves
were laudable, so long as the guidelines of the Roman Ritual were
carefully followed, ‘‘but we can in no way approve the procedures
Gassner uses in his exorcisms.’’ His operations were too public, too
sensational, and were above all based upon the false idea that most
illnesses and disabilities are either simply caused by the devil or exac-
erbated by him. To prevent giving even greater offense, therefore,
Pope Pius declared that the usages invented by Gassner had to be
completely abolished and swept away (‘‘omnino inductum ab ipso
hunc exorcismorum morem tollendum abolendumque’’). Hence-
forward Gassner was to desist from his healings and was never to
exorcize again, except in secret, rarely, and only if it was clear after the
most careful investigation that someone really was possessed by the
devil; and then he was to proceed only in the strictest accord with the
Roman Ritual. Despite continuing efforts to extract something favor-
able for Gassner’s healing methods, Joseph Hanauer is right in con-
cluding that the pope’s language represented a clear and total defeat
for the priest from Klösterle.∂∂
Here the political maneuvers might have reasonably ended, but two
diehard princes of the empire continued to assail the pope’s deci-
sion and urged him to reconsider. Neither Count Karl Albert von
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst nor Duke Ludwig Eugen realized how lit-
tle chance they had, but together with Prince Abbot Martin Gerbert of
St. Blasien they kept up their efforts until Gassner’s death in 1779.∂∑
The ecclesiastical politics of the Holy Roman Empire had allowed
a remarkable religious revival in the form of a wave of exorcistic
healings to spread and flourish, but the empire’s constitution also saw
to it that once the pope and the emperor were adequately notified and
motivated, Gassner’s movement had to stop. We are perhaps used to
51
reading that after 1648 the structures of the empire were so stiff
and unwieldy that this strange polity could no longer function. But
we have found that the empire worked rather well, first permitting
and then forbidding an enthusiastic anti-Enlightenment healing
movement.
One matter deserves more attention. We have noticed that Gass-
ner’s healings raised a host of serious questions for fervent Catholics
of the 1770s. It may be surprising that the secular authorities cracked
down before the system of bishops, archbishops, and finally the pope
stepped in. But it is also clear that the Catholic leaders of the empire
did not condemn Gassner on theological grounds. Instead, many
writers esteemed him as a person and recognized the value of his
religious claims but still registered what they called political objec-
tions. A Catholic admirer of Frederick the Great’s Prussia, for exam-
ple, asked whether a wise ruler could remain indifferent to Gassner’s
style of healing. Scoffers could be heard from as far away as London
and Florence, he claimed, and engravers were exploiting the credu-
lous with images of Gassner. Worthless little books were selling in
editions of five to six thousand copies, and at higher prices than usual.
Pharmacies were selling ‘‘eye lotions, olive oil, universal powders, and
teas for incense,’’ all blessed by Father Gassner; Ellwangen had at-
tracted two thousand strangers a day, including both the disabled and
the merely curious.∂∏ These cures and the false hopes of cure were
harming simple people and the territories from which they came.
Making a rough calculation, one author claimed that already twenty
thousand invalids had gone to Ellwangen or Regensburg, taking with
them at least one million gulden, money that was desperately needed
closer to home. Continuing his political arithmetic, he estimated that
every invalid needed at least two healthy assistants, which made for
another forty thousand persons on the road to Ellwangen or Regens-
burg. But for every disabled person one could guess that there were
five or six gawkers willing to pay two to three hundred gulden (surely
an outrageous exaggeration—such a sum represented the cost of a
small house). Developing a sort of mini-mercantilist protectionism
aimed at defending each imperial territory’s fiscal base, the author
52
waxed indignant at the amount of specie being exported to Ellwangen

or Regensburg and then wasted there. At the end of July 1775, he
calculated, there were some three thousand invalids in Regensburg
waiting and hoping for Gassner’s help, most of them from Bohemia,
even though Gassner could not treat more than fifteen to twenty a
day. Assuming that these disabled were accompanied by six thousand
able-bodied assistants, and assuming that each person on average
spent three to six weeks waiting, spending perhaps ten gulden during
their visit, one could easily estimate the travel costs alone at 600,000
gulden, and that did not count extra expenses for books, pious engrav-
ings, cartoons, anti-papal images (directed at Pope Clement XIV,
probably for dissolving the Jesuit Order), prayer books, drugs, drink,
indulgence pennies, and for the soldiers to keep order; one could
easily chalk up Gassner’s cost to surrounding territories at one million
gulden.∂π
To make matters worse, the author claimed that it was not even
clear that Gassner provided real help to those who temporarily felt
better. A careful investigation was needed to determine if he was doing
any good at all. The writer also worried that by overemphasizing the
agency of the devil, Gassner ran the risk of devaluing all the good that
physicians did and of reviving the age of witch trials, an age that
Empress Maria Theresa had only recently closed off with her Edict of
1766 prohibiting witchcraft prosecutions. It would make more sense
to seek out Dr. Mesmer, whose cures, he thought, were better at-
tested.∂∫ Note that this Catholic writer did not try to score any theo-
logical points against Gassner and his system but criticized the social
and fiscal effects of Gassner’s popularity. For some observers this was
just the sort of ‘‘unrest’’ that prudent rulers suppressed.
Another Catholic writer, political adviser to the princes of Öttingen-
Wallerstein and privy councillor to the prince provost of Ellwangen,
was at first a fervent supporter of Gassner and a scurrilous opponent of
Sterzinger; over time he came to have his own political reservations
about Gassner.∂Ω Known to modern historians as the rather colorless
winner of a journalistic essay contest in 1785 concerning ecclesiastical
states of the empire, Joseph Edler von Sartori was far from colorless in
53
the mid-1770s, when he was one of the most active contributors to the
Gassner scandal.∑≠ Although he had at first expressed no reservations
about Gassner’s cures, by 1776 he conceded that many questions still
needed close examination. It troubled him, for example, that some of
those who claimed to have been helped by Gassner had not really been
crippled before. Others had not shown any permanent improvement.
Well-attested facts were needed, as the ‘‘reasonable Lavater’’ had de-
manded. Sartori was also irritated that Gassner dismissed thousands
of helpless people, telling them that their condition was merely natu-
ral. Was God’s Word useless against natural conditions? What hap-
pened when ‘‘despondent, ignorant people are driven mad and believe
that spiritual aids can bring them no further help with their natural
illnesses just because exorcism has failed’’? Sartori had seen enough to
persuade himself that Gassner had real powers, but many questions
remained. His ‘‘political’’ doubts were further stimulated by the re-
ports from Sulzbach, where Gassner had stayed in the fall of 1775.
There a six-year-old peasant boy was said to have been cured of his
mutism, but afterward could speak no better than before. Or what of
the Count Vaubert from Burgundy, who had walked without a crutch
before he was treated by Gassner, yet afterward was celebrated be-
cause he could walk without a crutch?∑∞ In a sharp departure from his
earlier writings, Sartori now voiced the suspicion that certain prov-
inces of the empire were ruled by prejudices in favor of ‘‘witchcraft,
spirits, and demonic possessions’’ simply because they were permitted
or encouraged by their secular or spiritual princes. Would Gassner
have achieved fame if every crippled patient had had to obtain the
opinion of an experienced physician before submitting to exorcism? If
the prince had threatened to punish those who streamed to Gassner,
how famous would Gassner have become? ‘‘It was all devilish, and
why? Because certain territorial princes permitted it.’’ He now agreed
with the sarcastic aphorism of Muratori, that ‘‘only those lands are
filled with devilries that have a famous exorcist staying there, and only
so long as he’s there.’’∑≤ The great model of prudence in such matters
was Empress Maria Theresa’s Austria. She was certainly not ‘‘En-
lightened,’’ but she forbade simple people to go traipsing off to exor-
54
cists unless they had been properly examined and certified. Without
her caution, princes now ran the risk of reviving witchcraft accusa-
tions. Maria Theresa knew how to distinguish the deceitful from the
mad and melancholy, and those who hoped to achieve something
through a pact with the devil from those who actually did work de-
monic magic. Following her example, the princes of Swabia and Fran-
conia needed to test in order to exclude patients who were ‘‘simple,
retarded, crazy, afflicted with illnesses of body or spirit, or with other
vehement passions of the imagination, with disordered love or anger,’’
or those who had ‘‘inherited deficits from the disordered nature of
their parents.’’ One should not simply agree with those who claimed
to be possessed, for convulsions could have natural origins and the
hysterical and hypochondriacal were often haunted by ‘‘horrifying
images’’ which gained control because of their ‘‘disordered, thick,
melancholy blood.’’ And yet Gassner always determined that such
patients were possessed. Why, even Protestant theologians had writ-
ten better about the proper signs of demonic possession! But Sartori
feared that his appeal for serious testing by experts was doomed by the
‘‘current state system of ecclesiastical and secular states.’’∑≥ Here then
were ‘‘political doubts’’ that hinged upon the failure of certain states to
follow the healthy example of Austria in curbing superstition.
Oddly enough, another kind of political reaction to the Gassner
affair came from certain Protestants who had been attracted to the
exorcist and were reluctant to see his system condemned. In contrast
to Catholics, who might have to follow their authorities and yield to
the archbishops of Prague and Salzburg, one Protestant gloried in his
Protestant right to defy the Catholic authorities. Although Arch-
bishop Colloredo was perhaps the ‘‘primate of Germany,’’ he was not
infallible, he wrote, nor did his theologians include anyone of real
wisdom. Instead of thoroughly investigating Gassner, the archbishop
of Salzburg had reacted out of a foolish fear of disorder. Halfway
through this pseudonymous treatise the unknown author began to
blast away insultingly at the secular prejudices visible in the pastoral
letters from Prague and Salzburg. Were they not perhaps envious of
Gassner? Lacking his faith, had they not turned in wrath, contempt,
55
and madness against him? Was it not both traditional and obvious
that the devil could cause physical ills? Was the current age really so
enlightened that the pains of hell were only a myth? Had Lucretius
and Julian the Apostate had the last word? Of course not. But the
theologians of Salzburg were a race of adders, filled with pride and
malice.∑∂ To this author’s amazement, the learned of Salzburg did
not even sense that reason of state should support Gassner and his
doctrines, for theirs was a church that depended upon miracles as a
source of money. Instead they represented a secret and treacherous
enemy of Rome, a hypocritical wolf in sheep’s clothing.∑∑ We may be
surprised to find such symptoms of disappointment and outrage on
the part of Protestants, but it is noteworthy that some of this bitterly
disillusioned author’s arguments were essentially secular and political
in nature.
Let us consider one final political note in this discussion. Abbot
Oswald Loschert, the Premonstratensian abbot of Oberzell near
Würzburg (1704–1785), was one of Gassner’s most adamant support-
ers. His arguments ranged widely over theology, church history, the
nature of the empirical evidence for the reality of the devil, and the
effectiveness of the exorcisms. In 1749 Loschert had taken an active
part in the trial of Maria Renata Singer, subprior of the Cloister of
Unterzell, who stood accused of witchcraft and was executed in one of
the most spectacular late cases in all of Germany. Loschert had also
composed a detailed report sent to Maria Theresa, who had expressed
her disgust at the affair.∑∏ By 1778 it was public knowledge that the
emperor had ordered Gassner exiled from Regensburg and that the
pope had condemned several elements of his system. For Loschert,
however, much remained to be salvaged. He insisted, for example,
that the exorcist had not obtained his knowledge of probative exor-
cisms from forbidden books (such as the Armamentarium of Stoi-
ber, the Flagellum Daemonum of Menghi, or the Malleus Daemonum
of Alessandro Albertini a Rocha) but from respected books (listing
those of Candidus Brognolo, Gelasius di Cilia, Anton Reichle, and
Baruffaldus).∑π
In considering the pastoral letters of the archbishops of Prague and
56
Salzburg, Abbot Loschert produced a remarkable argument. How

could it be, he asked, that men who follow ‘‘the views of Espen or
Febronius and aim at diminishing papal power and at expanding the
power of bishops’’ could have the effrontery to accuse two bishops (he
probably meant those of Regensburg and Chur) of tolerating a form
of exorcism that rested on ‘‘superstitious formulas’’?∑∫ Here Loschert
placed his finger on a sore spot in the German episcopal movement,
for it became clear in the 1780s that while Febronius seemed to be
arguing for the autonomy of the German bishops, his arguments
appealed mainly to the archbishops; as we’ve seen, the German bish-
ops were divided over Gassner while the great metropolitan princes
took a fairly unified stand against him.
Loschert was also determined to see the papal condemnation as
one of only practical administrative significance. Pius VI had not
condemned exorcisms, of course, and had merely insisted that they
should occur ‘‘rarely, secretly, and in accord with the Roman Ritual.’’
But logically one exorcized more often if demon possession became
more common, and Loschert was sure that Gassner’s probative exor-
cisms had proved that demonic assaults were epidemic. It seemed
crucial to emphasize that Gassner had not mainly dealt with full-
fledged demonic possession but with ‘‘devils who torment, sicken,
and assault a person inwardly or outwardly.’’ No wonder the exor-
cisms of the Roman Ritual were not appropriate here, for they dealt
‘‘only with those obsessed or possessed by the demons and not with
bodies vexed with illnesses.’’ And yet even the Rituale Romanum pro-
vided formulas for ‘‘praecepta in nomine Jesu’’ (i.e., admonitions in
the name of Jesus). The German bishops, moreover, had never given
up the right to establish their own ‘‘special regulations’’ so long as
they did not contradict the Roman Ritual. Indeed, Loschert was right
on this matter. As recently as 1773 the diocese of Bamberg issued its
own Ritual with a broadened understanding of exorcism.∑Ω
None of these objections could salvage Gassner’s system. The tu-
mults he had provoked, the religious excitement, and the revived
fears of the devil were too offensive to the peace of the empire; and
his probative exorcisms, his lack of appropriate consultation with
57
physicians, and the sensational publicity surrounding his healings had

brought the church under a cloud of Enlightened ridicule. For a time
the Holy Roman Empire had provided a niche in which his religious
revival could take root and flourish, but politically the authorities
both secular and ecclesiastical also had effective means at their dis-
posal with which to snuff out such enthusiasms. The lightning bolt of
Gassner’s healing campaign illuminates both the imperial niches he
might exploit and the imperial mechanisms that still functioned effec-
tively to silence this sort of revival.
58
three
HEALING
‘‘If all the illnesses that this priest describes have their origin in the
devil, and if they can only be treated by exorcisms, then bid our
physicians good-bye.’’
—Churbaierische Intelligenzblätter für das Jahr 1774,
12 November 1774
To judge from the countless little portraits that circulated in

the 1770s, Father Johann Joseph Gassner was a short, plump, clean-
shaven man of modest demeanor. When he dealt with the devil, how-
ever, he became vehement and, some said, physically forceful as he
touched, stroked, grasped, and finally even wrenched the affected
limbs of those who sought his help. From 1774 to 1776 he and his
‘‘wonder cures’’ became a major topic of Enlightened debate in Ger-
many and provoked reflection on a wide range of topics, especially on
whether the devil really intervened in the world as a physical force or
had physical effects. In the 1760s Gassner had developed a kind of
exorcism that was not exactly orthodox, or at least did not follow slav-
ishly the rules laid down in the Rituale Romanum of 1614.∞ This was
clearly one of the reasons why he got into trouble with critics and with
his ecclesiastical superiors, who forced him to stop his mass exorcisms
in 1776.≤ One year after Gassner began his healing tour in southern
Germany, treating a variety of ordinary ills by working on the assump-
tion that many of them were of demonic origin, Franz Anton Mesmer,
as we have noted, went on a healing campaign through some of the
same territory. Although Mesmer healed many of the same sorts of
miseries, he claimed that his therapy was based on the natural force of
‘‘animal magnetism’’ and not on any supposed casting out of demons.
The similarities were striking enough to engage the satirical talents of
skeptics and to enrage the perfervid supporters of Gassner. This set
59
Johann Joseph Gassner, 1775. Contemporaries
remarked on the large number of pious images,
like this one, depicting Gassner healing various
sorts of ailments: the sick, the dumb, and (as
here) the crippled. Such images were
commonly sold at pilgrimage shrines and
displayed on the walls of even humble homes.
Source: J. M. Söckler, copperplate engraving
1775; reproduced by the kind permission of the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
HEALING
the stage for a noisy debate over the nature of healing, with the forces
of Enlightenment ranged against the forces of exorcism.
Gassner and Healing: The Early Years
In this chapter we will look closely at the actual healings conducted

by Gassner. The sources for such an examination lie partly in the
printed literature of the Gassner controversy, in which we find vari-
ous reports of eyewitnesses reproduced and criticized at length.≥ But
the main sources for this chapter are the manuscript diaries, ‘‘pro-
tocols,’’ and memoranda taken down by various observers and surviv-
ing today in the archives of Feldkirch (Vorarlberg), Munich, Neuen-
stein (Hohenlohe), and Bamberg.
When Gassner began his healings in Klösterle, he first dealt only
with his own parishioners, but already in the early 1760s he began
blessing and healing those from nearby regions: from all parts of
the Klostertal, from Montafon, Bludenz, Feldkirch, Appenzell, and
St. Gall in Switzerland, and even from the south-running valleys of
Tyrol such as the Alto-Adige. We are not well informed about his
methods in those early days even though he kept several ‘‘diaries’’
starting in the late 1760s. It is clear that the reason he started record-
ing his successes (and only his successes) was his fear that he might
one day have to account for what he was doing.∂ But it did not occur
to him to record exactly what he did in any detail. Instead, he con-
tented himself with remarks like these:
Recently a married woman came here from Nassereith in Tyrol suffer-
ing with the falling sickness (epilepsy) for many years, and she under-
went the test (the ‘‘Prob’’) in the presence of two court officials from
here. The result was that she was helped with the above-mentioned
illness.∑
Christian Big im Wald was crippled (krum) with horrible pains; was
helped in the presence of the Herr Paumeister [=Baumeister] from
here with blessings and restored to complete health although pre-
viously all doctoring had done no good.∏
61
HEALING
Franz Riedinger from Bludenz was blind in one eye and was restored
to full sight through use of spiritualibus [i.e., spiritual aids or sacramen-
tals] here.π
These are clearly not the sources from which we can glean much
information about what was actually happening, or even what they
meant to the participants, and one may doubt whether such memo-
randa would have done Father Gassner much good if he had been
called to account.
Tabulating the Cures
We can, however, tabulate the cures he claimed in order to see what

sorts of complaints his supplicants presented. In the ‘‘Diarium’’ that
he maintained for 1769 he recorded most of his cures and healing
miracles over the previous two years, 1767–1769. If we divide them
by gender, we discover that Gassner did not always even make that
distinction clear, and sometimes merely remarked that ‘‘many’’ peo-
ple were helped with a particular problem. Even so, he claimed to
have helped over two hundred. (See table 3.1.) From this list it might
appear that Gassner was treating an unusually high number of those
who suffered from epilepsy (thirteen in all, or about 9 percent of the
140 patients whose ailments can be identified). This was, after all, a
disease that had seemed especially mysterious (or even ‘‘sacred’’) ever
since antiquity. Several of the other ailments he listed seem to fit into
the category some people regard as psychosomatic complaints. But
the profile of his patients changed as he became more well known.
In the ‘‘diary’’ Gassner kept for the spring of 1773, he claimed to
have healed 130 persons with the ailments listed in table 3.2. From
this list we can see that by 1773 epilepsy had fallen from roughly 9
percent to just over 3 percent of all the human complaints. Let us also
note, however, that Gassner was obviously also blessing cattle and
claiming satisfactory results here too. If there’s a placebo response,
does it work on cattle? Or only on the owners of cattle? But these
early lists also illustrate perfectly Gassner’s major innovation. He was
62
HEALING
Table 3.1 Gassner’s Cures in Klösterle: 1767–1769
Male Female Gender Unknown
Epilepsy 2 8 3
‘‘Sick’’ 4 7 1
Chest and heart trouble 3 2 0
Fevers 7 7 2 + ‘‘viele’’
Blind 5 4 ‘‘viele’’
Deaf 0 1
Throat 0 1
Head and face 2 5
Womb 0 1
Crippled, lame 13 16
Cramps and paralysis 1 2
Pains 4 1 2
Dead [!] 0 1
Cancer 0 1
Mad 10 11
Stomach, vomiting 1 2
‘‘Dörrsucht’’ (consumption) 0 1
Marital impediment 1 1
‘‘Maul’’ (lockjaw) 0 1
Leprosy 0 2
Could not eat 2 1
Unknown 1 0 62
Totals 56 76 70, plus two

entries listing
‘‘viele’’ many)
Source: Gassner’s entries in Diözesanarchiv Feldkirch, Pfarrei Klösterle,

1.2.2.1 (‘‘Diarium I, 1769 mit Nachträgen seit 1759’’).
obviously treating most illnesses and misfortunes as if they could be

caused or exacerbated by the devil. He did not discourage the use
of medicines but often triumphantly noted that by the time patients
came to him, medicine, barber surgeons, and doctors had proved
themselves of no use. We find among these hundreds of unfortu-
nate persons none of the classic signs of demoniac possession: no
63
HEALING
Table 3.2 Gassner’s Cures in Klösterle: Spring of 1773
Male Female Gender Unknown
Epilepsy 2 2
Fatigue 1 0
‘‘Sick’’ 0 2
Chest and heart ailments 1 7
Shivers and fevers 3 4
Infections 1 0
Blind 6 6
Deaf 3 2
Cough 1 1
Throat 0 3
Headache 2 5
Womb 0 1
Testicle 1 0
Crippled 3 4 2
Pains 20 25 14
Mad 4 4
Totals 48 66 16
130 in all
Subgroups of the above:

Suffering ‘‘Maleficium’’ 2 4
Children 4 3 2
Marital impediment 0 2
Cures of cattle diseases 11 owners
Source: Gassner’s entries in Diözesanarchiv Feldkirch, Pfarrei Klösterle,

1.2.2.2 (‘‘Diarium II, Frühling 1773’’).
supernatural strength, no frothing at the mouth,∫ no unaccountable

knowledge of distant events. So far as we can tell from these lists, they
showed no mysterious ability to speak foreign languages they had
never learned. Basically, Gassner employed blessings and exorcisms
to treat illnesses that looked natural. As I suggested in the first chap-
ter, this is perhaps one of the ways in which the Enlightenment af-
64
HEALING
fected his practice: the devil no longer looked as if he were separate

from the world of normal appearance. But if we want to understand
what he was doing, these records are pretty unyielding.
Fraud? Hysteria?
One of our first responses to such lists of diseases and disorders

cured by Gassner is likely to be a search for modern scientific or
medical explanations. We may no longer suspect that Gassner was
fraudulently falsifying the records or secretly using metal magnets or
‘‘sympathetic’’ materials to obtain marvelous results. I mentioned in
the previous chapter, however, that Franz Anton Mesmer felt certain
that Gassner was using animal magnetism without knowing it, and a
strong tradition within the history of psychoanalysis has tended to
agree.Ω And it continues to be common to look over such lists of
ailments and to perceive in them (or to choose from them) the psy-
chosomatic complaints and the neurotic or ‘‘abnormal’’ conditions
that we regard as characteristic of ‘‘hysteria,’’ even though most of the
classic conversion hysterias have also evaporated in recent decades. It
has long been common to denigrate those religious phenomena one
disapproves as sick, ‘‘enthusiastic,’’ fanatic, hysterical, or pathological,
as Ann Taves points out in her excellent book, Fits, Trances, and Vi-
sions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to
James.∞≠ The naturalizing language of psychiatry carries with it a
flattening effect that eviscerates or devours the neighboring notions
of religion and religious experience. Ever since the days of William
James, therefore, students of religion have been wise to look for me-
diating positions rather than opting for the stark dichotomies of natu-
ral vs. religious.∞∞ We need to consider the claims of those who urge a
reenchanted nature, a more meaningful science, without necessarily
adopting a fully supernatural dimension. This means that we are well
advised to ask, at least as a first step, what Gassner was doing. We
need to look closely.
65
HEALING
Better Notes: What Was Gassner Doing?
As Gassner’s healing campaign became notorious and controver-

sial, his enthusiastic followers began to take better notes, and Gassner
may have learned to be more careful as well (by eliminating his cattle
cures, for example) and to speak less and less of witchcraft. Because
the sources are not as rich, I will pass over his tour of the region just
north of the Lake of Constance, where he impressed many but failed
to persuade the cardinal bishop of Constance, Franz Konrad von
Rodt, who gave Gassner an hour-long interview and allowed him to
try his blessings and exorcisms in his seminary.∞≤ The picture of Gass-
ner’s healing methods clears up considerably from the period in Ell-
wangen onward. Now we get detailed reports and learn, moreover,
that little copper-plate engravings were so commonly sold that, ac-
cording to the Protestant Augsburg notary Georg Wilhelm Zapf, a
copy could be found ‘‘in almost every room of the pious while his
printed blessing is posted on all the doors of simple and superstitious
people.’’∞≥ From such images we can obtain an idealized example of
the propaganda that at least shows us what Gassner and his followers
wanted others to see and experience. Seated at a table, Gassner usu-
ally began with instructions and commands to the patient as well as to
the demons he presumed were present. In most cases when a sup-
plicant came to Gassner and knelt before him, Gassner might touch
him with a small cross or hold his head in his hands. If critical
voices among the observers challenged this physical contact, how-
ever, he might refrain from stroking or touching of any sort. After a
short conversation with the patient, in which Gassner learned the
name, origin, and complaint of the person, he undertook to deter-
mine whether the devil was present either inwardly or outwardly or
perhaps that the disorder was only natural.∞∂ In most of his early cases
he persuaded himself that a demon was at work, and he tried to
persuade his suffering patient of the same fact. Much depended upon
awakening a sense of trust and on proving that the devil still assaulted
mankind in body and soul, and here he drew extensively on his own
personal experiences with the devil. Next he urged the patient to obey
66
HEALING
him to the letter and to believe that the devil was in fact at the root of
his or her particular troubles. This was often the most difficult point,
and Gassner would proceed by commanding, ‘‘If this illness is un-
natural, then I command in the name of Jesus that it should show
itself at once.’’ Gassner used this Exorcismus probativus to move the
demon around in the body and to evoke a wide range of horrible
symptoms: swellings first here, and then there, fevers, headache,
cramps, convulsions, tremors, and pains in one foot, then in the other.
As Gassner moved the demon about, he was also showing the pa-
tient that the devil was really there. For this reason he often called his
procedures Praecepta, precepts, or lessons, in which the devil learned
who was boss and the patient learned to trust Gassner and the power-
ful name of Jesus, but also how to cause his own symptoms to come
and go. Sometimes Gassner seemed to torture a patient for up to
fifteen minutes with the worst pains and cramps he had ever felt and
then dispel them with an exorcismus lenitivus. In the most stubborn
cases Gassner might take two hours before he was ready to finish off
the devil with a final, explosive exorcismus expulsivus.∞∑
Astonishingly the wished-for symptoms usually appeared whether
Gassner spoke in German or in Latin, and often enough a patient
would exhibit not just his or her original complaint but horrid, painful
convulsions or swellings that he or she had never experienced before.
Gassner also proved a master at commanding changes of mood, evok-
ing in quick succession laughter and then sadness, hatred and then
timidity or high passion. It also appeared that Gassner was fond of
using special hand gestures or strokes. Of course he used the sign of
the cross, but he might also grip the hands or head of the patient and
place his stole on affected body parts: stomach, chest, lower back,
abdomen, hands, or feet.
The View of Gassner’s Critics: Physical Explanations
Critics such as Ferdinand Sterzinger were convinced that when

Gassner touched his patients, his rubbings, grippings, and manual
pressure communicated some secret but natural force. He concluded
67
HEALING
‘‘that a secret force from the kingdom of nature lies hidden in the
operations of Gassner. This rubbing of the exorcist on his belt, the
strong pressure on the head of the patient while he pushes with the
right hand on the forehead while the left pushes the sensitive parts of
the neck, the feeling of the pulses, the shaking, the various posturings,
and all of these physical treatments, which I have seen with my own
eyes, all give me cause to believe that either a magnetic, an electrical,
or a sympathetic force produces these effects, and all the more easily
because the power of imagination of the patient is also excited to the
maximum, partly by his preaching, partly by his fixed gaze, partly by
an immoderate trust in this holy man, partly by the constructed hope
for a healing, and other charming fantasies, which are easily capable
of confusing the imagination and of moving the vital spirits.’’∞∏
In stubborn cases, Gassner seems to have moved on to ever more
energetic measures. According to one sharp critic, he treated a girl
whom he regarded as fully possessed by a demon, by grabbing her
hair and shaking her head so sharply that the observer thought she
would surely lose both hearing and sight.∞π
The worst pains may have been felt by the arthritic and crippled, for
Gassner argued that their pains were usually caused or exacerbated by
the devil and that a firm faith and some enforced movement might
drive away the pain and restore flexibility to limbs that had grown stiff
from lack of use. Despite the immediate pains of the procedure, some
participants later signed affidavits that the treatment produced real
improvements.∞∫ For critical observers, however, Gassner often went
well beyond the limits of good taste and decency, causing one woman
to experience repeated assaults of prolapsed uterus, and openly strok-
ing or palpating the possessed breasts of another.∞Ω
Despite these indiscretions, which critics tried to blow up into scan-
dals (without much success) the most astonishing cures were those
worked by Gassner through the use of merely mental commands, or
exorcisms in Latin accompanied by secret, inaudible mental instruc-
tions.≤≠ It is no wonder that his fame as a miracle worker spread far and
wide and that even crippled and hopeless Protestants betook them-
selves to Gassner wherever he went. He used his exorcisms to try to
68
Don Ferdinand Sterzinger, Ord. Theat.
(1721–1786). Sterzinger was a prominent
member of the Bavarian Academy of
Sciences and a spokesman for the Catholic
Enlightenment. In the 1760s Sterzinger
gained a reputation as an outspoken
opponent of ‘‘superstition’’ and of
traditional doctrines of witchcraft; in 1775
he emerged as one of Gassner’s fiercest
opponents. Die Aufgedeckten Gassnerischen
Wunderkuren, title engraving by J. M.
Söckler, 1775; reproduced by kind
permission of the Staats- und
Stadtbibliothek, Augsburg.
HEALING
persuade them that conversion to the Catholic faith was the only
secure way to keep the devil away, but of course we cannot tell at a
distance of over two hundred years whether their conversions were
profound or permanent. At the conclusion of a healing episode, he
would pray, bless the patient, and prescribe the continued use of relics
and holy oil, water, powders, incense, and herbs, all combined with a
strengthened faith in the Holy Name of Jesus. Local merchants re-
joiced in a strong demand for crucifixes, rosaries, images of Gassner
or the Agnus Dei, rings, blessed salves, and devotional booklets.
Participant Observations: Bernhard Joseph Schleis and Abbot Bourgeois
In the enthusiastic but detailed account given (anonymously) by

Dr. Bernhard Joseph Schleis von Löwenfeld (1731–1800), we can
sense some of the excitement that accompanied a visit to Gassner.
This personal physician to the widowed Countess Palatine Dorothea
Francisca of the Upper Palatinate-Sulzbach, traveled over one hun-
dred miles to Ellwangen in early March 1775, to see for himself
because he had read such contradictory things about Gassner’s cures.
By the time he got there, the little town of only about two hundred
solid houses was teeming with over fifteen hundred foreign visitors.
Schleis reported that throngs of sick and miserable (‘‘in soul and
body’’) lingered outside Gassner’s house just hoping to glimpse the
wonder-worker. Only noblemen and ladies enjoyed unrestricted ac-
cess to him, however, and others had to try to obtain an appointment.
Schleis found out, though, that by paying a few groschen, he could
slip past the corporal guarding the door and join a group of observers.
Inside he found that an interior wall had been taken down so that
visitors could easily see what was transpiring in the next room. There,
starting at 5:00 a.m. every morning, Gassner sat at a table with a
crucifix to his right. At one end of the table sat a notary ready to take
down information concerning each supplicant. Gassner himself was
plainly dressed except for a blue stole decorated with red flowers and a
silver chain around his neck, from which dangled a piece of the true
cross. With each patient, Schleis confirmed that Gassner’s first task
70
HEALING
was to order the illness or complaint to manifest itself. If skeptical

doctors were present, he seemed all the more peremptory in calling
forth illnesses, sometimes seizing the feet or legs of the crippled, or
the head and neck of those with headaches. He often laid his stole on
the affected limb or around the head of the afflicted while ordering
the complaint to appear. Sometimes this happened at once, but with
others it might take ten repetitions. Gassner explained that those
who manifested their complaints at once were the ‘‘Gut- und Stark-
glaubige’’ (those of good and strong faith) while the more hesitant
were ‘‘Zaghafte und Kleinglaubige’’ (persons of small and hesitant
faith). If a disease or condition did not show itself at all, Gassner held
that the person was either naturally afflicted or was perhaps a total
unbeliever. In either of those cases, the person was sent away, some-
times with a prayer but with no noticeable improvement. Dr. Schleis
was emphatic that Gassner excluded no one, not even those with
epidemic diseases or women with monthly complaints, for in his view
unnatural diseases could easily hide under the mask of the natural.
There were of course truly natural and incurable ailments such as
hernia, or a flap of skin that might have grown over an eye, or a badly
mended broken leg, but often Gassner claimed, even in such cases,
that he could at least alleviate the continuing pain. If a man’s lame leg
resulted from a damaged Achilles tendon or from a severed nerve,
that was natural and beyond Gassner’s help. But if it came from Gicht,
Gliedersucht, or Schlag fluss (gout, arthritis, or stroke) he might cry out
‘‘Oh! This is an unnatural crippling’’ (O! dieses ist eine unnatürliche
Lähmung).≤∞ Schleis seems to have been fascinated with the element
of showmanship here but also convinced that real healing was go-
ing on.
Another close observer noticed something else at Ellwangen. A cer-
tain Abbot Bourgeois, tutor to the young count of Donsdorf, wrote a
description to his brother in Luxembourg emphasizing that Gassner
caused symptoms to come and go repeatedly. After cramps that were
brought on and then dispelled, patients also suffered waves of contra-
dictory emotions: uncontrollable laughter followed by weeping; fran-
tic singing followed by despair and the melancholy desire to confess.
71
HEALING
We would find some symptoms hard to duplicate under clinical cir-

cumstances. ‘‘He commanded that the pulse in the right arm become
weak and barely detectable, but in the left arm it should become
strong and fast. Private physicians in attendance felt the right and left
pulses and agreed that it was so. The military doctor from Würzburg
confirmed all this.’’≤≤
Most strikingly, it now appeared that Gassner practiced until the
patient ‘‘was convinced of the origin of his trouble and the strength of
his [exorcistic] methods, and then he taught him how to help himself
in the future and had him test this out [lässt ihn in seiner Gegenwart
die Probe machen] in his presence. To this end he commands the
sickness [Krankheit] to come again, and now the patient has to prevent
the outburst, or drive it away if it’s already present, with an opposing
command, which he issues inwardly in the Name of Jesus. I saw this,
and the patients agree.’’≤≥ Here Bourgeois described an aspect of
these therapies that no one else had remarked upon before. We will
notice that as the eyewitness reports became denser in 1775 this
aspect became more and more evident.
The Problem of Eyewitness Reports: Who Saw What?
Let us observe that obviously none of the testimony I have cited was
impartial. Despite constant claims of objectivity and honesty, those in
attendance found themselves either persuaded or skeptical, either
willing or unwilling to believe what seemed to be presented. And so all
of the scandalous scenes I have read come, naturally enough, from
skeptics, while believers are the source for my notions of who was
really helped by Gassner’s faith healings and exorcisms. There is a
hermeneutic circle here that sometimes makes the determination of
what ‘‘really happened’’ seem like a sort of historical will-o’-the-wisp.
But all historical sources come with their own biases, and historians
regularly make a kind of rough and imperfect sense from materials
that can never yield up unmediated truths. The best we can do with
these reports is notice anomalous details in the accounts of those who
basically favored or distrusted the wonder worker.
72
HEALING
One of the first deeply skeptical reports came, as we have noted,

from the Enlightened pen of Don Ferdinand Sterzinger, the Thea-
tine nobleman from Munich. Already on 12 November 1774 the
Churbaierische Intelligenzblätter reported the recent publication of
Gassner’s little guide entitled Useful Instruction in Fighting the Devil
(Nützlicher Unterricht wider den Teufel zu streiten).≤∂ What caught the
eye of the editors in Munich was surely Gassner’s explicit attempt to
make witchcraft and magic (‘‘Hexerey’’ and ‘‘Zauberkunst’’) an essen-
tial part of the Christian religion and his angry attack on such moder-
ate Enlighteners as Ferdinand Sterzinger, and other heroes of the
Bavarian ‘‘witchcraft war’’ of the 1760s, such as ‘‘Arduino Ubbidente
Dell’Osa’’ (i.e., Jordan Simon O.S.A., professor of church history and
canon law in Erfurt), ‘‘Blocksberger’’ (i.e., Andreas Ulrich Mayer, the
chaplain of an Upper Palatine nobleman), C. F. Kautz (an imperial
councillor from Vienna) and the ‘‘doubting Bavarian’’ (i.e., Jacob An-
ton Kollmann). So it will not surprise us that the energetic Sterzinger
arranged to visit Ellwangen in December 1774, soon after Gassner
had arrived there.≤∑ On the December 21 Sterzinger watched with
amazement as Gassner called forth and expelled ‘‘demons’’ from a
series of personages, including the daughter of Bavarian Privy Coun-
cillor Protomedicus Johann Anton von Wolter, Baroness von Erdt,
who was suffering from convulsions. The ‘‘Protokoll’’ or eyewitness
report that Sterzinger published quickly became notorious.≤∏ Soon
the prince elector of Bavaria was sufficiently aroused that he forbade
any further discussion of Gassner in Bavaria even as he refused to
allow the exorcist into his duchy. As we have already seen, Sterzinger
was prepared to grant that Gassner’s patients did enjoy some relief of
their ailments, even if only for an interval. But he was sure that there
was no proof here that the devil was present or that Gassner could
move him around or finally expel him.
Starting with Sterzinger’s so-called Exposure of Gassner’s Miracle
Cures (Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren), debate over
Gassner really got under way, and as it developed, one of the basic
issues revolved around the nature of the testimony, the number and
kind of witnesses, and the detail of the reports that attested to the
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HEALING
exorcist’s methods. In this game, eyewitnesses were trumps, as we can

see from the report of Dr. Bernhard Schleis of Sulzbach. Dr. Schleis
told his readers that as a doctor he too had had his doubts about
Gassner’s marvelous cures. Could there possibly be a magnetic, elec-
trical, sympathetic, or magical force at work here? That was Ster-
zinger’s suspicion, as we have seen, and just the sort of question for
which Schleis’s medical training had prepared him, but when he vis-
ited, he reported that he was unable to detect any hint of fraud or
physical means of cure. On one day Schleis was there with two other
doctors, a Catholic and a Protestant, and they carefully witnessed
cures of many ills, including ‘‘epileptic, hypochondriacal, melan-
cholic, furious [i.e., mad], and even [fully] possessed persons,’’ and all
who absorbed the influence of Jesus’ name were cured. Schleis noted
that he himself underwent a treatment for his podagra, a subject on
which he had written a book (published in 1767), and he too experi-
enced the relief of Gassner’s blessings.
With a great show of medical learning, Schleis noted that recent
advances in the understanding of magnets had clarified the marvelous
effects of special armatures and devices, and that electrical sparks too
could be generated with the right kind of rubbing. ‘‘But no!’’ Gassner
used no magnets, and who had ever seen him emit a spark? He admit-
ted as well that the human imagination (Einbildungskraft) was always
the biggest factor in any successful cure. ‘‘Yes, yes, the imagination is
according to these philosophers the queen of this world: all luck and
misfortune, riches and poverty, victory and defeat consist only in the
imagination. So why shouldn’t health and sickness also consist of
that?’’ And yet, what pharmacist or surgeon can conquer cataracts and
with a word persuade the blind to see? In Ellwangen a Prussian officer
who observed Gassner for a time claimed that out of thirty patients no
more than two failed to respond to his cures.≤π
So far, I have found no full manuscript record of his Ellwangen
campaign (late 1774 to early 1775), but Alois Merz, the zealous ex-
Jesuit, wrote in his biography of Gassner that in Ellwangen hundreds
of persons of the highest rank now came to him, and that Bishop
Fugger ordered the procedures to be carefully reported in order to
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HEALING
fend off criticism.≤∫ Merz claimed that this was done, but that because
of the great similarity of all the cases, he simply omitted most. Evi-
dently, Merz was not yet sensitive to the importance of such eyewit-
ness minutes.
The Regensburg Reports
Let us leave aside the details of the reports for a moment and take
note of what happened to Protokolle in general. The literary battle
over Gassner became thoroughly consumed by the question ‘‘Who
had the better reports?’’ and this question in turn influenced the
actual reports taken down during Gassner’s healings. From his stay in
Regensburg, for example, the Bayerische Staatsarchiv preserves the
actual minutes of Gassner’s operations, running from June to Sep-
tember 1775 (see table 3.3). They present a staggeringly full, even if
fundamentally biased, record of healing. We are given the name,
address, and complaint of over four hundred persons, whom Gassner
seemed to help. But now for the first time the minutes record in detail
the numbers of persons who could not be helped. And those numbers
went up dramatically. On 16 June 1775, no one was listed as sent away
without help, but already by June 20, the records include seven per-
sons whose maladies were either natural (such as four cases of pro-
found blindness) or whose mental condition made it impossible for
them to take in Gassner’s message. Several of these latter were de-
scribed as melancholy or ‘‘schwermütig’’ or half-wits and fools (‘‘eine
halbe Nahrheit bemerkt,’’ ‘‘verwiesen . . . weil sie nur mit halber
vernunft befunden,’’ ‘‘wegen Abgang des Verstands oder munteren
Vertrauens’’). This was a new level of self-denying reportage, but
after July 4, the numbers of those dismissed with no cure skyrocketed.
As the minutes became more and more scrupulous, it became clear
now that those who had to depart with no help actually outnumbered
those Gassner could help.
It is of course possible that Regensburg was simply a less enthusias-
tic place for faith healing, that the conditions in Ellwangen could not
be so easily reproduced. After all, even Jesus had had trouble with the
75
Table 3.3 Gassner’s Cures in Regensburg: June–September 1775
Male Female Dismissed without

(m) (f ) Help (d) Totals (m, f, d)
16 June 8 8
20 June 12 9 8
21 June 9 8 3
23 June 10 14 25
27 June 13 12 21
28 June 3 9 26
30 June 4 6 10 59m, 66f, 93d
4 July 3 13 8
5 July 6 4 43
7 July 5 6 25
11 July 1 9 24
12 July 4 8 21
14 July 6 2 35 25m, 42f, 156d
18 July 14 5 50
19 July 1 3 19
21 July 10 18 29
26 July 1 5 8
28 July 2 3 38 28m, 34f, 144d
1 August 6 7 40
2 August 1 3 25
4 August 2 9 24
8 August 0 7 28
9 August 5 2 39–42
11 August 2 8 38 16m, 36f, 194–197d
16 August 2 3 35 + ‘‘viele’’
18 August 4 5 16 + ‘‘viele’’
22 August 8 6 21
23 August 5 7 49
25 August 4 8 16
29 August 5 8 15
30 August 8 6 17 36m, 43f, 169++da
HEALING
Table 3.3 (continued)
Male Female Dismissed without

(m) (f ) Help (d) Totals (m, f, d)
1 September 0 8 9
5 September 4 5 19
6 September 1 1 11
12 September 9 11 26
13 September 0 1 11
15 September 5 2 4 19m, 28f, 80d
aSome entries implied that several extra persons were dismissed. This is indi-
cated by the plus sign; for larger numbers implied, the double plus sign is
used. Source: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, GR 1210/20.
people of his own home district and could work no miracles there
(Mark 5:5–6). But it is easily possible that what had really changed
was the nature of the eyewitness minutes. Increasingly we see what
one report from Ellwangen had mentioned, that Gassner was not
fully successful with a patient until she or he learned to control his or
her symptoms.≤Ω By the summer of 1775 it appeared to some of Gass-
ner’s proponents that what he was really doing was teaching tor-
mented people to intensify and then to dismiss their pains themselves,
with the help of Jesus.≥≠ But if this is what he now seemed to be doing,
it was becoming clear that some cases were beyond his instruction.
The numbers of those dismissed with no help now ballooned to num-
bers that exceeded those cured. As we can see from table 3.4, those
dismissed in this way rose from 42 percent of supplicants to almost
80 percent by August. I suspect that Gassner’s healing methods were
actually shifting under the scrutiny of skeptics and medical observers,
and that he was increasingly using exorcism as a way to teach people
how to manage their pain and control their symptoms. He was still
‘‘thinking with demons,’’ but he was doing something new.
The ailments Gassner was treating remained as diverse as ever. The
minutes from Regensburg allow us to list the cases from the first
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HEALING
Table 3.4 Summary of Gassner’s Regensburg Healings:

June–September 1775
Total Dismissed as
Dates Male Female m+f Dismissed Percent of Total
2nd half June 59 66 125 93 42 percent

1st half July 25 42 67 156 70 percent
2nd half July 28 34 62 144 70 percent
1st half Aug. 16 36 52 194–197 79 percent
2nd half Aug. 36 43 79 169++ 68 percent++
1st half Sept. 19 28 47 80 63 percent
Total persons seen: 1,268 ++

Total healed: 432
Total dismissed: at least 836
Source: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, GR 1210/20.
twenty days of his campaign there (see table 3.5). We notice that
epilepsy was now fairly rare but that ‘‘pains’’ and lameness of various
sorts, arthritis, crooked hands and feet, along with shakes, tremors,
and convulsions were the most common complaints. A large number
of patients also came with eye and ear troubles or with neurological
disorders. Explicitly psychological problems were by no means the
most common complaints of these troubled souls.
The Sulzbach Reports
In September 1775, Gassner traveled to Sulzbach, where the wid-

owed Countess Palatine Francisca had invited him, doubtless at the
instigation of Dr. Bernhard Joseph Schleis, who had become one of
his most articulate proponents. Here we are not told how many Gass-
ner could not help, but according to Schleis, who signed a large num-
ber of these minutes, the key came when Gassner got these patients to
take charge of their symptoms, to piously get rid of troubles when
they returned (see table 3.6). As he told eleven-year-old Isabella En-
huber (25 September 1775):
78
Table 3.5 Symptoms of Those Healed by Gassner in Regensburg:
16 June–4 July 1775
Dismissed
Male Female without Help
Epilepsy 3 2 1
Swellings 2 4
Pains 11 9
Lame feet (‘‘crooked feet’’) 7 2
Short foot 1 2 2
Lame hands (‘‘crooked hands’’) 1 2 1
Headache 3 2
Faint/weak 2 1
Tremors, shakes, convulsions 9 14 1
‘‘Serious illness’’ 0 4
‘‘Womb’’ 0 2
Nausea/can’t eat 2 1
Paralysis 4 2
Can’t walk 2 1
Asthma/lungs 2 6
Eyes (blind, dim, painful) 12 4 5
Hearing 4 12
Anxious 1 1
Unconscious spells, trance 0 2
Dizzy 0 1
‘‘Fury’’ 1 0
Melancholia 0 1
Secret concern 1 0
Obsessed (seemed possessed) 1 4 1
Dismissed with no description 90
or diagnosisa
Totalb 69 79 101
(47 percent) (53 percent)
aAfter 4 July 1775 the numbers of those dismissed (‘‘verwiesen’’) rose dramat-
ically.
bA total of 148 patients were helped with at least one symptom; 101 were sent
away either because Gassner determined that their conditions were natural or
because they were so sad, despondent, or depressed that they could not be
taught to trust.
Source: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, GR 1210/20.
HEALING
He reminded her again that perhaps in later years she would be over-
come with such pains, and she should then remember at once that they
came from the devil. So she should quickly expel them for these pains
are imposed on the good and the wicked alike, but the Enemy espe-
cially attacks those of her temperament [of the same temperament]; so
she should strive daily or more often, even hourly, in this battle, and
command the devil in the Name of Jesus, that he should depart from
her immediately with all his assaults on her body and soul.
Table 3.6 Gassner’s Cures in Sulzbach: 21 September–11 November 1775a
Males Females Indeterminate Total
21–23 September 1 Graf 1
22 September 1 Baron 1
23 September 9 18 1 Kind 28
23 September 1 3 noble ladies 4
26 September 2 3 5
27 September 3 4 ‘‘viele’’ 7+
28 September 7 11 ‘‘viele’’ 18+
28 September 2 4 6
30 September 6 24 ‘‘einige’’ 30+
30 September 7 1 8
1 October 8 18 26
1 October 1 3 4
2 October 1 9 10
2 October 21 19 ‘‘einige’’ 40+
3 October 21 8 29
4 October 5 8 13
Totals: 142 206 3+ 351 +

40 percent 59 percent 1 percent + 100 percent
aSigned and sealed by Bernhard Joseph Schleis von Löwenfeld. Source: Bay-
erisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, GR 1210/20.
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HEALING
Over and over now, the eyewitness reports record Gassner’s success in
teaching people to cause their pains to come and go. To take only one
example, the noble lady Maria Anna von Schezzer came complaining
of anxiety, weakness, headache, and toothaches.≥∞ Gassner immedi-
ately commanded a demonic ‘‘wind’’ to swell up into her chest, and
her whole body began to shake with ‘‘hysterical movements’’ until she
could hardly breathe. With the command ‘‘Cesset ista Agitatio,’’ she
became calm at once. Then he evoked headache alone, and she fell
unconscious, but with the command ‘‘Iterum bene se habeat’’ she
came to herself again. Next came her toothaches, and the headaches
again; then ‘‘Sie solle alles zugleich fortschaffen’’—she was to get rid
of them all at once. Finally Father Gassner prompted all of her pain-
ful affects, cramps, and pains to come at once, and ‘‘she drove off
every attack with courage and perseverance’’ and departed full of
consolation. What had happened? What had she learned?
Gassner’s Return to Ellwangen: The Politics of Healing, 1777
When Gassner was summoned back to Ellwangen by the bishop of

Regensburg in October of 1777, a year and a half after Pius VI had
directed that he not perform so publicly or so promiscuously ever
again, it was evidently part of a campaign to change the minds of the
Curia in Rome. High nobles from Hohenlohe and Württemberg,
among others, were there assembled, and Alois Merz, the ex-Jesuit of
Augsburg, was also present to witness and record the wonders from
October of 1777 (see table 3.7).≥≤
What can we say about such a list? For a start, we may be impressed
by the numbers of noblemen and noble ladies who claimed to have
found relief from their ailments. Of course, it was also true that when
such personages were involved, they were almost sure to be recorded,
and so their appearance in the list makes a larger impression than it
would have if we had complete records. It is also true that by 1777 Gass-
ner had been condemned by both the pope and the emperor, so that
these cures were also politically delicate, aiming at changing the minds
of those in Rome who had engineered Gassner’s condemnation.≥≥
81
Table 3.7 Gassner’s Healings in Ellwangen in 1777a
Princes and Freiherren (6):

Carl Albert Count of Hohenlohe Waldenburg and Schillingsfürst
Count de Faubert, Grand Bailif d’Épée de la Province de Bourgogne
M le Baron de Silwestolpe
Baron von Preysing
Freyherr von Lochner
Freyherr von Gravenreuth
Ladies and Gentlemen (28):
Ladies 22
Gentlemen 6
Lower and Middle Class (183):
Women 103
Men 80
Children under Age 12 (15):
Girls 7
Boys 6
Unknown 2
Totals:
Female 132 (57.4 percent)
Male 98 (42.6 percent)
Unknown 2
Total 232b
aThe Protocol of these healings was witnessed by Carl Albrecht Prince of
Hohenlohe und Waldenburg, Ludwig Eugen Duke of Württemberg, Gan-
dolph Ernst Count of Kürnberg and Cathedral Canon of Salzburg and
Canon of the Provostry of Ellwangen. The first seventeen were attested to by
‘‘Francisca, widowed Countess Palatine of Zweibrücken’’ herself, the mistress
and employer of Dr. Bernhard Joseph Schleis.
bThese numbers include ten Lutherans and one Catholic convert from Würt-
temberg.
Source: Data extracted from [Oswald Loschert], Altes und neues System
([Frankfurt, Hanau, and Leipzig], 1778).
HEALING
Trying to Explain
There are dangers in reducing the experience of demonic posses-

sion to some supposedly more fundamental psychopathological con-
dition, to neurosis, hysteria, psychosomatic disorder, and so forth. To
avoid flattening out the experiences of other cultures and assimilating
the variety of humankind to our own parochial experience, we need to
preserve the integrity of the language-world within which such dis-
orders have their reality and in which we experience them. The lan-
guage we use is not just an interchangeable set of arbitrary labels but a
framing and shaping environment that actually alters what we experi-
ence. In short, a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet, for
the fragrance of roses is part of a whole culture in which roses have a
complex historical and symbolic function. Just as food ‘‘tastes’’ bet-
ter if it is beautifully presented, other foods may revolt us once
we learn their names or what their names connote. Doctors often
show that they know this as they disguise diseases under the cloak of
mysterious-sounding Latinate names.
In a thoughtful book about the miracles at Lourdes in the years
after 1858, Ruth Harris noted that the efforts to medicalize and ex-
plain the healings there were part of a doctrinaire positivist campaign
to take the Catholic Church out of French politics and the spirit
out of the world in general. Interestingly, that effort withered in the
years after 1890 as the Catholic Church responded with ever better
documented case histories of undoubted and frankly unexplainable
cures.≥∂ We are entering the contested realm between the claims of
experience and the claims of orthodox naturalism. Harris insists, I
think rightly, that we should not blindly reduce miracles to auto-
suggestion, placebos, or unprecedentedly successful psychotherapy,
as if we can explain satisfactorily everything we find in our records.≥∑
She interprets the miracles of Lourdes and elsewhere as examples of
self-transformation, in which afflicted persons learn to take a dif-
ferent attitude toward life and toward their place in it. She also
openly admits that some of the cures achieved at Lourdes truly
have no physical or psychological explanation.≥∏ I am tempted to say
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HEALING
something similar about Gassner. Clearly he achieved results that

could not be easily explained either then or now, and he was doing so,
in part, by transforming the frame within which people understood
their own sufferings, making them somehow more intelligible and
tolerable. In claiming that we should retain the categories within
which people thought and experienced their religion, I do not wish to
disclaim all interest in explaining (in our own terms) what we find in
the past. But the number of cures Gassner achieved and the speed
with which he achieved them (in minutes or hours at the most) hardly
fit with what we understand about placebos today.≥π Moreover, the
concept of the placebo has the strange effect of colonizing territory
for medicine even as it admits an efficacy beyond our current abilities
to explain. When we say that a particular medicine works by way of
the placebo response, we mean that it seems to have an effect that we
cannot otherwise explain, but we do not mean that it works instanta-
neously or miraculously. As Ed Cohen has shrewdly remarked,
Instead of having to recognize, let alone appreciate, that other kinds

of ameliorative agency may be grounded in different ways of making
sense in and of the world, perhaps having their own specific forms of
efficacy, the placebo concept allows bio-medicine both to diminish and
to annex these alternative forms of healing agency for its own purposes.
To designate an experience of healing as a ‘‘placebo effect’’ is not only
to set it apart from the ‘‘real’’ domain of bio-chemical causality (while
retaining the hope that some day a bio-chemical explanation may ap-
pear to account for this seeming deviation) but also to restrict the
extent to which its existence can appear as a credible alternative to the
deterministic claims of bio-medicine.≥∫
In trying to learn from the indigenous categories of the people under

study, I am similarly encouraged by the studies of Thomas Csordas,
an anthropologist. In a study of a young man who impressed charis-
matic healers as demon possessed but appeared to psychotherapists to
be suffering from psychosis, Csordas emphasizes the priority of em-
bodiment, and the existential basis of suffering, which comes before
all efforts to name or categorize the problem.≥Ω Moreover, the meta-
phors of disease and disorder on the one hand and of demons and
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HEALING
possession on the other are simply not mutually reducible to each

other: ‘‘Where these two entities diverge the most is precisely in their
rhetorical properties or possibilities. The fact that an evil spirit is a
first-person process with an intentional history [that is, it has a will
and an evil purpose] rather than a third-person process with a natural
history [that is, diseases are merely natural evils] means that it [the
demon] can be questioned and commanded. Hence, it can be manip-
ulated in its intimate relations with the afflicted person. . . . Moreover,
because each disease implies a different natural history, it also implies
a different treatment.’’∂≠
In contrast, charismatic healers and exorcists usually have the same
remedy for all demonic afflictions. Csordas defends the view that one’s
specific culture or subculture makes a difference in the experience of
suffering and affliction. Arthur Kleinman, a medical anthropologist,
has also urged the cultural untranslatability of many disease entities
and diagnoses and their essentially irreducible experience.∂∞ This can
sound all very sensitive, politically correct, and well-intentioned, of
course, until we reach the apparently logical conclusion that if a per-
son thinks she or he is possessed, then biomedical psychotherapy
should simply give way to the exorcist.∂≤ This conclusion is not always
happy. Several scandals have erupted in recent years when psychia-
trists have tried to cast out demons. One trouble is that merely think-
ing oneself possessed was, traditionally, never a sufficient proof (either
for charismatic healers or for the Roman Catholic Church) that one
really was possessed. Traditionally the Roman Ritual required the as-
surance that no natural explanation could be found before one re-
garded some preternatural condition as demonic.
So when we are tempted to explain religious phenomena by invok-
ing ‘‘suggestion’’ or the placebo response, please notice that we may
be merely replacing one mystery with another. Recent studies of the
placebo response have suggested just how inscrutable it seems and
how far we are from understanding it.∂≥ We do not advance very far if
we declare wondrous cures to be nothing more than the effect of a
principle we do not understand. One point of connection does seem
promising, however. It’s been suggested that when placebos seem to
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HEALING
work, they do so by mobilizing habits, expectations, and symbolic

representations.∂∂ Surely Gassner was doing that by trying to deepen
the trust of his patients in the healing power of Jesus, and by placing
their sufferings in a broader, more meaningful religious framework.
When we confront the mysteries of healing, therefore, the deeper
question might be: What sort of explanation or understanding gives
us as observers comfort? Of course, comfort is not a criterion for
truth, and some of us would insist on the importance of ‘‘uncomfort-
able truths.’’ But uncomfortable truths can cut both ways, disillusion-
ing the illusioned, and reenchanting the disenchanted.∂∑ What sort of
answer do we find satisfying? For some, the availability of miracles is
the greatest comfort available in this life, while for others the reassur-
ing sense of the world as a regular, orderly place of purely natural
processes (rather than of demons or miracles) marks the major ad-
vance of the modern mind. Historians do not have to decide between
these views, but I find that leaping to a ready-made, modern, medical,
psychiatric explanation usually keeps me from hearing what all of my
historical subjects are talking about. As historians, as human beings,
one of our first jobs is to attend with compassion to what was going on
for all those who inhabited distant times.∂∏ And what Gassner seems
to have been doing by the end of his career was providing religious
instruction by which afflicted persons could take charge of their ills by
placing them in a larger framework of Christian meaning. Psychia-
trists will not agree on what to call that, but it must have been a
considerable relief for many of those who so eagerly sought him out.
86
four
INTERPRETATION
Far be it from us to accept as dogma that the devil can physically enter
into people, either individually or as legions; that the devil makes
them sick; that the devil joins with them in a pact; that magicians and
witches can deploy the help of the devil—We must refute all these
things, rooting them out like weeds that smother religion.
—Johann Salomo Semler, Samlungen von Briefen und Aufsätzen über
die Gassnerischen . . . Geisterbeschwörungen
So what if there were persons who contrived to see the effects of

Satan everywhere, physical possessions and apparitions of spirits?
These were mere errors of the times and not a necessary result of the
doctrine that sometimes evil spirits cause certain effects in
particular people.
—Georg Friedrich Seiler, ‘‘Gedanken über die Frage:
Sind böse Geister, und haben sie einen schädlichen Einfluss
auf den sittlichen Zustand der Menschen?’’
In March of 1775 the physiognomist and Zurich pastor Johann

Kaspar Lavater wrote to Johann Salomo Semler, the great theologian
of Halle, imploring him to investigate the miraculous healings of
Gassner, about whom Lavater had been reading for several months.
Lavater did not choose Semler at random or only because he was
already well known as one of Germany’s leading theologians, a foun-
der of ‘‘neologist’’ interpretation, an approach to Scripture that
started with the assumption that the Bible was a human document, to
be understood within a historical context. Many Lutheran readers
would have also recognized Semler simply as the expert on modern
demonology. If Gassner was to make sense in a Protestant context, he
would have to make sense to Semler. But just as Catholic controver-
sialists received or understood Gassner in a context infused with fears
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INTERPRETATION
of reviving the witchcraft trials of just a decade or so earlier, so in the

Protestant North, too, news of Gassner fitted into a framework that
had developed over the previous fifteen years. We should recognize
that it wasn’t only German Catholics who found themselves facing
the devil in the mid-eighteenth century. And such issues were not
merely theoretical.∞
‘‘The Lohmann Woman’’: Demons or Angels?
In 1759 a twenty-one-year-old woman named Anna Elisabeth

Lohmann, the daughter of a hops dealer from Horsdorf in the Saxon
duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, fell into seizures and visions, first coming
from the devil and then from angels. After several amateur efforts
failed, she followed the advice of one of her angels and went to the
Lutheran pastor, Gottlieb Müller of Kemberg for help. Müller took
her visions seriously and decided that she was actually possessed by
demons. Using his own formulas, he tried to exorcise her twice in
mid-1759 and then published an account of these affairs. Publicity
brought disapproval, however, from the general superintendent in
Wittenberg named Hoffmann, who remembered all too well a recent
series of scandalous ‘‘spirit possessed’’ Protestant girls.≤ The Eccle-
siastical Ministry in Dresden ordered Müller’s little publication con-
fiscated and decreed that he should cease publishing on the matter.
Anna Elisabeth Lohmann was also ordered arrested, but in the mean-
while she had returned to her home in Anhalt, where the Wittenberg
and Dresden authorities could not touch her. But she was sent to a
poorhouse in Dessau, where she was confined, separated from others,
threatened, and beaten in an ultimately successful effort to get her to
eat and to control her visions or at least stop talking about them.≥
Pastor Müller was not so easily silenced. He could not be treated as
crazy or possessed, and as an educated man, he appealed to educated
opinion in the newspapers of Berlin, Altona, and Hamburg, and to the
universities of Wittenberg, Leipzig, and Halle. These appeals ignited
a minor theological storm as various luminaries sprang (mainly) to
attack Müller and his notions of demonic influence.∂ The most impor-
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INTERPRETATION
tant of these came from the pen of the increasingly famous ‘‘neo-
logian’’ Johann Salomo Semler, who mounted an unnecessarily mas-
sive assault on poor Pastor Müller.∑ At that point, in late 1759, Semler
could object that Anna Elisabeth did not display the three classic signs
of demonic possession (knowledge of hidden things, knowledge of
foreign languages she had never heard, or supernatural strength), and
he went on to point out that the other ‘‘lesser signa’’ don’t prove
anything since they could appear as purely natural phenomena: such
signs as blasphemy, screaming, inhuman eating habits, or pains in the
extremities. It is of interest that Semler here adopted the cardinal signs
of possession listed in the Catholic Rituale Romanum of 1614, but there
was nothing too unusual in a Lutheran doing that. Johann Heinrich
Zedler’s Lutheran-orthodox Universal Lexicon had done the same in its
entry on demonic possession from the year 1733.∏
Interestingly, however, Semler went on to doubt the value of all
empirical data with respect to possible demoniac possessions, claim-
ing that even the Evangelists might well have been mistaken in think-
ing that someone was possessed. Even millions of eyewitness reports
would only show us that in a given case demonic possession was
possible. And the truth was, as far as Semler was concerned, that
possession seemed flatly impossible on metaphysical grounds. This
left Semler with a major problem, of course, for Holy Scripture spoke
often of demonic possession, at least in the gospels, and despite a
great deal of sifting and citing, Semler admitted that he was confused,
concluding, ‘‘truly certain persons were possessed back then [in the
time of Christ], although I do not have the same concept of this
possession as one commonly assumes.’’ Most ominously, perhaps,
Semler claimed that even if the Evangelists did speak of demoniac
possession, they were only using the language of their day, which did
not bind modern Christians to accept their idea as a reality.π
Semler and Demoniac Possession
In his barely concealed confusion and in his efforts to find a sat-

isfactory formula, Semler obviously sensed that this little Saxon
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incident had raised much larger issues, and so later in 1760 he wrote
a thesis on demon possession in the gospels (De daemoniacis, quorum
in Evangeliis fit mentio), dealing now with a subject, as he said, that
touches ‘‘the very foundations of the Christian religion’’ (ipsa chris-
tianae religionis fundamenta).∫ Here he started off with the work of
the seventeenth-century English polymath Joseph Mede (and with a
work he merely cited as Enquiry into the Meaning of Demoniacks in the
new testament) and developed the idea that even the biblical examples
of demoniac possession were actually cases of natural illness, and
especially madness.Ω Heaping scorn on Catholic miracles and pil-
grimages that had as their purpose the expulsion of demons, he burst
out, ‘‘O barbaricum stoliditatem, si ad religionem, quidem ceteris
meliorem, haec sacra insania, maxime pertinere dicatur.’’ But then,
what of Christ’s miracles? This should be of no real worry, he claimed,
for the fact was that Jesus’ miracles were still intact, because he was
still curing terrible madnesses and other ailments ‘‘extra omne natu-
ralium subsidiorum remedium.’’∞≠
Here we notice Semler’s well-known eagerness to demythologize
Scripture, to find less ‘‘superstitious’’ explanations for the mysterious
foundations of faith.∞∞ In so doing he plowed through a heap of an-
cient Greek and Jewish citations to discover that daimonas for most
Greeks were nothing more than the nonmortal part of man, so that
good men produced good daimonas, and bad men were survived by bad
daimonas. The ‘‘superstitious Jews’’ foolishly thought they could expel
demons through the use of special roots and herbs in a way totally
different from the methods of Jesus. The basic point was that the
ancient world was buzzing with false and foolish ideas; for the ancient
Greeks and the Jews ‘‘all things are full of demons, and they are able to
invade men and drive them mad.’’ So naturally they used turns of
phrase like ‘‘habet daemonem’’ or ‘‘est daimonizomenos’’ when all they
meant to say was that the person was sick or mad. For Semler this was
no reason to conclude that a demon as a kind of substance had taken a
seat in human beings (‘‘daemonem, substantiam ipsam quandam, in
hominibus sedisse’’). This was only a manner of speaking (‘‘phrasis
historica’’), and the Evangelists were Jews who simply adopted this
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turn of phrase (‘‘hanc loquendi consuetudinem servaverint’’) in order

that the magnitude of Jesus’ miracles should be the more easily under-
stood. Indeed, even if Jesus’ disciples thought that the possessed really
were possessed, that was not in itself a good enough reason for mod-
ern Christians to agree. For Semler, the apostles were actually full of
the false opinions of the Jews of their day. After all, they had foolishly
expected Jesus to return as an earthly ruler. And Jesus may well have
thought that this was not the time to correct all of these popular
errors. He had more important work to do. If these arguments did not
clinch the matter, Semler raised the stakes unfairly, it seems to me, and
denied that Jesus anywhere insisted on corporal demoniac possession
as a doctrine upon which salvation itself depended.∞≤
A Prior Crisis of Enlightened Demonology: England
In staking out this position, Semler was dealing more extensively

and more flexibly with the problems of demon possession than other
Germans of his day. But from the very beginning of his treatise he
indicates that the English had already ventilated many of these mat-
ters. In truth, we could call the Lohmann affair the second literary-
diabolical crisis of the eighteenth century, but only if we recognize
that the English had suffered through a first polemical crisis, starting
in 1737. In that year the zealous controversialist Arthur Ashley Sykes
(1683 or 1684 to 1756) published anonymously a treatise entitled An
Enquiry into the Meaning of Demoniacks in the New Testament.∞≥ Here we
find already many of Semler’s themes: that the demons of the ancient
Greeks were not devils but the souls of dead men, that such demons do
not in fact have any power over men, that many superstitious Greeks
and Jews attributed all manner of natural illnesses to demons even
after Hippocrates had destroyed the idea, and that therefore in every
instance of New Testament demon possession we can correctly find
nothing more than madness or epilepsy.∞∂ In an act of courageous
fancy Sykes opined that when Jesus cast out the demons from the
Gadarene demoniac, the 2,000 swine were driven mad by a sort of
infection that passed from the ‘‘possessed’’ madman into the pigs.∞∑
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This inflammatory treatise kicked off what I’m calling the first
literary crisis of the devil in the eighteenth century, for it exploded in
the next couple of years into over a dozen tracts by opponents and
defenders.∞∏ Some of this controversy was well known in Germany,
and Semler had certainly seen some of its constituent parts.∞π At issue
was the now vexed question of how one might best use non-Scriptural
sources to understand the terminology and thoughts of the writers of
Holy Scripture. The 1720s and 1730s were also the decades of high
dispute over the nature of miracles, and several of the demonologists
took part in that debate as well, criticizing either the evidence for or
the very possibility of New Testament miracles.∞∫
Semler’s New Approach to Scripture
Semler knew this debate and found it useful in clarifying his own
ideas about the extent to which Christians should be bound to the
words and ideas of Holy Scripture. And the topic gave him no rest. In
1762 he went over the recently plowed field in German, citing again
all the ancient and modern literature and responding to the recent
criticism he had received from the University of Jena. He summed up
his conclusions under six heads:
1. That Jesus did indeed work miracles.

2. That the Jews of old, however, had attributed many ills to evil
‘‘Ruach’’ even as the ancient Greeks thought that daimones were the
souls of evil men.
3. That the Old Testament does not speak anywhere of physical pos-
session by demons.
4. That, crucially, people do not have the same ideas at all times, nor
does God command us to agree on this particular subject.
5. Indeed, even some of the church fathers disagreed concerning de-
monic possession.
6. And some of the best Christian exegetes did not understand de-
mons as the Jews had done.
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As we can see, Semler’s thinking about demons had jolted him

to consider very wide-ranging conclusions indeed. He repeated and
clarified his conclusion that since the miraculous healings of Jesus
were not in question, it was of little moment whether demons actually
infested sick persons. Indeed, even certain medieval theologians had
agreed that ‘‘demonic possession’’ was only a term for sickness. One
of his most general conclusions was that Holy Scripture should never
be used as a teacher of physical knowledge, for such ideas vary and
develop. Perhaps consciously echoing Galileo’s claim about Scripture
and science, Semler argued that ‘‘the dogmatic truths of Scripture
never refer to physical things.’’∞Ω Our ideas concerning the sphericity
of the earth and our understanding of dew and lightning are just a few
examples of areas in which we are more advanced than the ancients.
And it seemed undeniable to Semler that the ancients, even the Evan-
gelists, believed far too much in spirits.≤≠ In the hands of neologists
such as Semler, Scripture was not to be equated with the Word of
God even if it might ‘‘contain’’ God’s Word. The problem of demons
pushed Semler to regard the Bible as a historical document with
human origins.
Thus Semler had moved far toward what Hans Frei called the
‘‘eclipse of biblical narrative,’’ for, despite the Bible’s historical ori-
gins, Semler was seeking to capture an essential message of Christ
that could be phrased in other words, to recharacterize the essence of
his spiritually healing message.≤∞ He was not just retelling the story
but trying to extract the meaning from the encrusted sarcophagus of
nonsensical ideas. So his move was not just a gesture of nascent ra-
tionalism or of accommodation to the world, and not just a rejection
of Orthodox hermeneutics on general principles, but an effort to find
out where and how Scripture might be effectively applied to the prob-
lems of life. The trouble for Semler was that Catholics weren’t the
only ones to find Gassner fascinating or even inspiring. If it had been
only Catholics, they might have been safely ignored or contemned,
which describes the normal approach of most Protestants through-
out the eighteenth century to Catholic ‘‘superstition,’’ revealing an
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ignorant but sovereign contempt that proceeded from two centuries

of theological impasse. No, frankly, his more serious problem lay with
those Protestants who took Gassner all too seriously.
We should be careful, however, not to replicate in our studies the
haughty disdain for Catholic thinking that we find in most Protestant
sources. Indeed, this is a sore point in Enlightenment studies gener-
ally. Most scholars have been so intent upon following the trail of
nascent modern thinking that they have resolutely ignored Catholic
biblical criticism and Protestant orthodoxy as well.≤≤ Here we cannot
take on this large task, but we can notice that some Catholics, too, had
their difficulties with demons.
Gassner and Catholic Biblical Understanding
English and German Protestants were by no means the only critics

of traditional theology and the demonology that came with it. In the
midst of Catholic opposition to the Jesuits and the dogmatic and
polemical theology they represented, a more historically oriented
Catholic pedagogy took root in some universities, in Würzburg and
Bamberg, for example.≤≥ It is one of the ironies of the history of
exegesis that by the mid to late eighteenth century, as ‘‘advanced’’
German Lutheran exegetes were leaving a literal interpretation of the
Bible behind, that niche could now be filled by avant garde Catholic
scholars, who opposed scholastic and Jesuit biblical exegesis in favor
of a more literal approach. Until the Lutherans abandoned this ap-
proach to Scripture, any Catholic taking up such a stance might easily
be accused of sympathy with Lutheran ‘‘heretics,’’ but from 1750 or
1770 onward, such a hermeneutic was no longer so exclusively identi-
fied as Lutheran.
On the basis of a literal and increasingly historical hermeneutic,
Enlightened Catholic thinkers increasingly found the notion of physi-
cally dangerous demons silly and unbiblical. The Theatine Ferdinand
Sterzinger of Munich had ignited a noisy discussion of these matters
in October of 1766 with an ‘‘Academic Address’’ delivered to the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Although the academy forbade the
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discussion of religious questions, Sterzinger declared that witchcraft

was no more than a laughable fairytale accepted only by ignorant
common people but regarded by the learned as a ‘‘vulgar chimera, a
trumped-up fiction.’’ He was joined by other reform Catholics, who
eagerly exploited the discrepancies between traditional views of de-
mons and spirits and what a more learned biblical exegesis was turning
up.≤∂ According to Wolfgang Behringer, objections to the traditional
interpretation of key biblical passages had serious limits because in
many verses the devil seems to have real and powerful physical effects.
Getting beyond them required a wholly new understanding of reality.
For Behringer, therefore, the crucial basis for denying witchcraft and
the physical influence of demons was the abstract system of reason
constructed by Christian Wolff, according to which demons were
simply ridiculous, and indeed Sterzinger did mention Wolff fleetingly.
But here Behringer reveals his modern bias toward arguments that
often seem more persuasive to us than they did to Catholics (and many
Protestants) of the eighteenth century. To me it is crucial that Ster-
zinger and his backers were willing to engage their opponents on the
contested ground of biblical interpretation. When Fortunat Durich,
OFM de Paula, attacked Sterzinger for misunderstanding the biblical
words hartummim and belahatehem (i.e., lehatim), Aloys Wiener von
Sonnenfels, a Viennese professor of Hebrew and convert from Juda-
ism, came to Sterzinger’s defense.≤∑ These were Old Testament words
for the Egyptian magicians and enchantments (e.g., Gn 41:8; Ex 7:11;
Dn 2:2), crucially the most powerful examples of effective magic in the
Old Testament. If it could be shown that even the Egyptian en-
chanters could accomplish nothing more than illusions, then one
might proceed with proofs that the traditional teaching on the devil
granted the evil one too much earthly power. We need to recognize,
therefore, that the new style of exegesis defended by Semler in Halle
had a parallel among reform Catholic theologians in Bavaria and
Austria, one that aimed at arriving at a literal interpretation of Scrip-
ture that would not conflict with the best Catholic traditions.≤∏
Sterzinger also depended for some of his views on ‘‘good Catholic
authors,’’ such as the Italians Girolamo Tartarotti (1706–1761), the
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abbot of Rovereto in the Trentino; Ludovico Muratori (1672–1750),

the learned librarian of Modena; Scipione Maffei (1675–1755), the
skeptical antiquarian of Verona; and the Italian-sounding ‘‘Arduino
Ubbidiente Dell’Osa’’ (humorous pseudonym for Jordan Simon of
Erfurt, an Augustinian canon, who was, therefore, ‘‘dell’ O.S.A.’’).
These citations remind us of the warm cultural relations between
South German Catholic states and their North Italian counterparts
only a hundred miles or so to the south.≤π Together these reforming
Italians of the first half of the century had attacked the cumulative late
medieval concept of witchcraft, pointing out that the biblical basis for
notions of the witches’ pact, flight to the sabbath, sex with the devil,
etc., was negligible. Muratori was also famous for his advocacy of
toleration, simplified religious observances, and neighborly love as
the core of Christian belief, a core that did not comport well with
scholastic ( Jesuit) dogmatics or with the ‘‘baroque’’ beliefs of those
who demanded intolerance of new ideas, suspicion of neighbors, and
ritual protections against demons.≤∫ Maffei had gone further and had
claimed that magic and all sorts of supernatural interventions in na-
ture were flatly impossible.≤Ω These Italian Catholics frequently no-
ticed the differences between the world of the New Testament and
their own, and used these differences to discredit cultural practices
and beliefs that seemed superstitious. In this way a literalistic reading
of Scripture could serve as an instrument of ‘‘Enlightenment.’’
We noticed earlier that when Ferdinand Sterzinger first took no-
tice of Gassner’s healings in Ellwangen, in December of 1774, he
relied for his criticisms upon what he claimed he had seen with his
own eyes. But he was also astonished to find a Catholic priest using
exorcistic formulas in ways that did not conform to the injunctions of
the Roman Ritual. Gassner’s division of demonic attacks into three
sorts, adding ‘‘circumsessio’’ to the traditional ‘‘obsessio’’ and ‘‘pos-
sessio,’’ seemed unorthodox to Sterzinger, deriving as it did from the
works of Girolamo Menghi, Candido Brognolo, Stephan Coletus,
and Ubald Stoiber, all of whom had been placed ‘‘for that reason’’
on the Index of Forbidden Books.≥≠ Invoking the healings of Jesus,
Sterzinger asked sharply where had Jesus and his apostles ever tried to
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evoke illness or seizures before trying to cure them? Where had any-
one taught that most disorders might be of diabolic origin? Where
can we find that Jesus healed only the unnaturally ill? Why wasn’t
Gassner content to follow the tests set down by the Roman Ritual of
1614?≥∞ Notice that Sterzinger’s critique was repeatedly grounded
not in some abstract Wolffian or Leibnizian appeal to reason, but in
what we can recognize as Enlightened biblical criticism.
In an appended ‘‘Catechism on the Doctrine of Spirits’’ Sterzinger
went further and took up a claim that one could find also among the
English and North Germans of the eighteenth century: that Christ
had chained all the devils in hell, so that they are not nowadays permit-
ted to swarm at will through the air. For the topic of demons, this was
closely akin to the common Protestant claim that the age of miracles
had ended with the primitive church. But because the effects of de-
mons were not literally miraculous (they were preternatural rather
than totally unnatural), one needed a separate and compelling reason
why demons could no longer act as once they had. Thus Sterzinger
stressed again the cardinal proofs of demonic possession as specified in
the Rituale Romanum: speaking strange foreign languages, stating cor-
rectly what was happening in some distant land when one could not be
expected to guess correctly, finding truly hidden objects of which one
had no knowledge, and reading the thoughts of others. Without these
proofs, ‘‘possession’’ was nothing more than a malicious fraud; such
poseurs should ‘‘have the devil beaten out of them.’’≥≤ Sterzinger’s
reliance on the Roman Ritual shows how, in skillful hands, it could
be deployed as a profoundly skeptical interpretation of demonic
possession.
Notice the variety of authorities invoked here: the skeptical witness
of one’s own eyes, a carefully weeded garden of ecclesiastical history,
along with the Roman Ritual of 1614, and a strict or Enlightened and
literal interpretation of the Bible, a style of exegesis that did not take
marching orders from medieval scholastic theologians. Crucial for
Sterzinger, as we have seen, was his fear that a revived belief in de-
monic possession would lead to a revival of witch hunting. It may
have been the ferocious attack by Sterzinger, indeed, that prompted
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Gassner and his followers to change course and to drop their refer-
ences to witchcraft and maleficium. In the emerging literary and theo-
logical battle of the mid-1770s, and in the hundreds or indeed thou-
sands of cases of which we have eyewitness records, we have seen that
Gassner dropped all efforts to detect maleficium, i.e., illnesses derived
from charms, spells, and witchcraft of magicians or witches. Our
exorcist learned to suppress these questions and to concentrate just
on healing. I think that in so doing he was following the best biblical
criticism of his day, a reading of Scripture that set forth the example of
Jesus’ exorcisms as the model for the modern exorcist. As Sterzinger
and others never tired of pointing out, Jesus had never diagnosed the
operation of witchcraft among those he regarded as demoniacs. So
instead of looking for maleficium, Gassner paid increasingly exclusive
attention to those ‘‘unnatural disorders’’ caused directly by the devil.
But in the last years of his life he also increasingly did away with the
distinction between natural and unnatural illnesses, now teaching
flatly that ‘‘all diseases come from the devil,’’ and ‘‘medicines are only
for those without faith,’’ as he put it in March 1779, shortly before his
death.≥≥
Gassner’s Catholic Defenders
The staunchest defenders of Gassner’s healings were members of

South German religious orders and especially the ex-Jesuits, many of
whom had retreated to Augsburg, where for a long time the papal
decree dissolving their order was not even published.≥∂ From there
the presses poured forth pro-Gassner material: sermons, reports, dia-
logues, scathing attacks on the Enlightenment, and printed replies to
skeptics such as Sterzinger.≥∑ The most energetic of these ex-Jesuits
was the cathedral preacher of Augsburg, Alois Merz, who happily
took up the cudgels against Protestantism, Josephinism, and the En-
lightenment as often as possible, contributing manfully to the poi-
sonous confessional atmosphere for which Augsburg was well known
in the late eighteenth century.≥∏ His office in the Augsburg cathedral
was that of ‘‘Kontroversprediger,’’ and his bitter, divisive, scathing
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sermons were models of their kind.≥π Realizing the force of Ster-

zinger’s biblically based objections, Merz published in 1775 a treatise
with the title ‘‘Solid Proof that the Means by which Gassner Heals
Diseases is Consistent with the Principles of the Gospels and the
Opinions of the Earliest Church.’’≥∫ Taking up the claim that Christ
had bound the devil and all demons in hell, Merz retorted that such a
view undermined all Christian morality, for it was the devil who con-
tinually tempted humankind to evil.≥Ω He claimed further that Gas-
sner’s methods of using trial exorcisms were exactly what the apostles
and the Church had taught for centuries.∂≠ It was indeed a mark of
Gassner’s care that he was willing to test to see if the devil was in fact
present. If he was unable to effect a cure, he regularly concluded that
the unfortunate condition was natural and hence beyond his means to
remedy.∂∞ Merz exultantly cited the testimony of a Protestant physi-
cian, who had attended Gassner’s operations in Ellwangen, to the
effect that ‘‘no earthly medicine’’ could produce the remarkable re-
sults that Gassner’s exorcisms achieved. Merz also reveled in the ap-
parent humility of Gassner’s claims, for when asked if he regarded his
cures as ‘‘miracles,’’ Gassner had wisely said ‘‘No,’’ that he was merely
exorcizing or blessing. But just as such illnesses were not wholly
natural, so too their remedies were not entirely natural either.∂≤ Merz
was apparently resuscitating the moribund concept of the preter-
natural so that he could carve out for Gassner a kind of space for
spiritual healing without making pretensions to full (and therefore
saintly) miracle-working.∂≥ Or, perhaps wisely, they refused to specu-
late about how the sacramentals worked and contented themselves
with the explanation that the devil had to respect the name of Jesus
and the rituals of the church. The Catholic Church had long denied
that the blessed sacraments (and, for some, the sacramentals as well)
depended upon the piety or character of the priest.
Merz had a much easier time of it when he moved on to the tradi-
tional claim that the devil had at all times possessed men in both body
and soul. Christians, he claimed, have also at all times sought help in
the holy name of Jesus, citing a long list of church fathers as well as
such Jesuit authorities as Petrus Thyraeus and Martin Delrio. Like
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the skeptical Sterzinger, Merz also cited the authority of his own eye-
witness, ‘‘although I could only stay as an observer for a few days.’’∂∂
Merz made short work of the suspicion that Gassner was deploying
secret magnets or the occult forces of sympathy: ‘‘I will never per-
suade myself that a magnet could have such an effect on the minds
[Gemüther], or the passions and thoughts of men. These patients are
driving off their illness, even in the absence of the exorcist, purely by
thought.’’ These effects had been attested by princes, imperial counts,
generals, lords, physicians, and even Protestants, who had all agreed
that their gruesome symptoms had to be ‘‘completely unnatural [voll-
kommen unnatürlich].’’ Ignatius of Loyola had explained how easily
we think a condition natural when in actuality it’s the attack of a
demon, and exultantly Merz showed that Martin Luther himself
agreed on the point.∂∑ It was a constant nuisance to Lutheran apolo-
gists of the 1770s that their Catholic antagonists had learned so well
to cite Scripture and the works of Luther, for it reminded them of
how far they had in fact drifted from the historical-literal and pro-
phetic sense of the Bible and from their moorings in early Reforma-
tion theology.∂∏ For the belligerent preacher of Augsburg (his official
title as Kontroversprediger required him to preach regularly on current
controversies), these points were all opportunities to reassert the con-
servative Jesuit message and to revive the ‘‘witchcraft war’’ of less than
ten years earlier, and this time on more favorable terrain. While the
early modern notion of witchcraft was largely a late medieval com-
position, demonic possession was an idea with a profoundly biblical
basis. It seems clear enough that a literal-historical reading of the
gospels favored the view that Jesus himself had cast out real demons.
But as Catholic exegesis caught up with that of Martin Luther, we
have found Johann Salomo Semler developing a historical-critical
exegesis that claimed to move the Bible into the modern world.
Altogether, Merz wrote over ten separate works, large and small,
defending Gassner.∂π Although Merz constructed a modern ex-Jesuit
defense of Gassner that eliminated or sharply curtailed references to
witchcraft and hexing as causes of demonic possession, not all of
Gassner’s supporters were so careful. Indeed, the abbot of the Pre-
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monstratensian Abbey at Oberzell, Oswald Loschert, became one of

the most prolific defenders of the notion that the devil was constantly
at work in the world, not only possessing those he could, but allying
himself with witches and magicians to increase his influence and to
magnify his destructions. It was no accident that Abbot Loschert
defended Gassner, for he had been one of the active prosecutors in
the trial of Maria Renata Singer, the subprioress of Unterzell, who
was executed for the crime of witchcraft in 1749 (certainly one of the
last witches to be executed on German soil).∂∫ Of course, the context
of the Gassner debate often explains a given participant’s point of
view, but this is obvious in the case of Oswald Loschert, whose many
works for Gassner served also to justify his own lifelong campaign
against the devil.∂Ω
We have examined Loschert’s political considerations of Gassner
(chapter 2), but here we must notice that the abbot of Unterzell
sometimes seemed ready to jettison medieval and early modern ac-
counts of demonic possession and to rely on a close reading of Jesus’
miracles. From Scripture one could learn that there were several sorts
of demonic attack (obsession, possession, bewitchment, and even cir-
cumsession), that demons often spoke from the bodies of the pos-
sessed, that an exorcist might force them to tell the truth, that posses-
sion did not necessarily depend upon maleficium of any sort, and that
therefore the search for witches or other Teufelskünstler was both
dangerous and wrong. Rural people were always too quick to accuse
their neighbors, Loschert maintained, but the model of Scripture
pointed the right way to healing without bandying about destructive
accusations of witchcraft.∑≠ To reach such conclusions, Loschert de-
pended upon a literal reading of Scripture and was able to dispense
with much of the scholastic apparatus that Enlightened critics so
harshly ridiculed. In his ‘‘Fourth Open Letter,’’ published in 1776,
Loschert took learned exception to the tactics of Semler and other
Enlightened contemners of a literal reading of Scripture. Applying an
allegorical reading, as Semler did, ran the risk of eviscerating the
Scriptures and of seeing only what one wanted to see in God’s Word.
This seriously intended riposte to Semler provides striking evidence
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that even hard-bitten Gassnerites were acquainted with Enlightened

biblical criticism and able to attack its weak points.∑∞ They were nei-
ther so ignorant nor so defenseless as students of the Enlightenment
have usually assumed. It is also ironic that Martin Luther had begun
his religious revolution with an attack on allegorical and metaphorical
readings of Scripture. Now, in the late eighteenth century, the tables
were turned, and advanced Lutheran opinion had adopted allegory,
while conservative Catholic readings favored a more literal approach.
Protestant Reactions to Gassner
Let us return now to the question of Protestant reactions to Gass-

ner. It is one of the more remarkable aspects of the Gassner scandal
that Protestants got so thoroughly enmeshed in it. Whereas it might
have remained a purely Catholic or South German controversy, Prot-
estant scholars and polemicists from all over the German-speaking
world took part, and the lines of division were not always what we
might have predicted.
With most theological issues, to be sure, Lutherans and Reformed
Protestants were content to notice, disagree, ridicule, or comment
exclusively upon the views of fellow Protestants. They high-mindedly
ignored Catholic theology and Catholic events. Similarly, for Cath-
olic theologians the Lutheran and Reformed camps set forth their
arguments on such radically different grounds—with so thoroughly
alien a set of proofs—that it was usually easier and more natural to
ignore them.∑≤ In the case of Gassner it was different, and not only be-
cause so many ordinary Lutherans ignored the admonitions of their
pastors and betook themselves to the wonder worker in search of
healing. Gassner frankly fascinated certain Protestant theologians,
and especially the Pietists.
The Württemberg Pietist and instrument maker Philipp Matthäus
Hahn maintained a reserve about the supposed miracles taking place
not far away in Ellwangen, but from his correspondence we learn that
Friedrich Christoph Oetinger had gone to see Gassner’s operations.∑≥
It’s not clear how Oetinger reacted, but we know much more about the
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fascination expressed by the enthusiastic physiognomist of Zurich,

Johann Kaspar Lavater, who first learned of Gassner’s healings at the
end of 1774. The Pietist pastor of the Orphanage Church in Zurich
wrote at once to the Catholic exorcist asking for personal contact, and
with a favorable reply in hand, Lavater now undertook a vigorous cam-
paign to obtain for Gassner a full and impartial investigation and veri-
fication of the wonders he was performing. That was the reason he
turned to Semler, as we’ve seen—a complication to which we will soon
turn. For Lavater the crucial context was not Gassner and the devil, for
Lavater actually expended little time or effort on the demons of the
New Testament even though he did preach voluminously on sin and
even on Satan as tempter.∑∂ No, for him Gassner represented a chance
to see or experience directly the transcendent. From 1768 on Lavater
had pursued a whole series of possible proofs that the Christian life
brought with it tangible ‘‘gifts of the spirit.’’ He was forever asking
friends and acquaintances to send him reliable reports of extraordi-
nary ‘‘phenomena and experiences’’ (Begebenheiten und Erfahrungen),
by which the world of spirit could be examined objectively, even scien-
tifically. Indeed his famous work on physiognomy from 1772 (and
expanded thereafter) was meant to contribute to this effort by showing
how the character or spirit of a man was visible in his facial features.∑∑
For Lavater, Gassner seemed like a dream come true, and he wrote
to the Swiss expatriate and Hannoverian royal physician Johann
Georg Zimmermann, challenging him to join others in investigating
Gassner’s methods and results.∑∏ Zimmermann seemed like a rea-
sonable choice, but the doctor remained unpersuaded that Gassner’s
cures, even if genuine, depended upon actually expelling demons. As
Zimmermann put it later, believing in such demons ‘‘was just too
much for our time.’’ In short, Zimmermann regarded Lavater as self-
deceived, even though he admired the Zurich pastor for possessing
charismatic influence over the imaginations of others.∑π
Zimmermann, therefore, did not undertake the investigation that
Lavater hoped for, and yet Lavater was all too aware of the crippling
bias in the Catholic accounts he had read. They could not provide
the proofs he continued to hope for. Lavater was, however, even
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more incensed at the dismissive ridicule and scorn which Enlightened

deists and Protestants heaped upon Gassner despite their total ig-
norance of what Gassner was achieving. Repeatedly he challenged his
complacent evangelical colleagues to recognize that Gassner pre-
sented facts (FACTA) that cried out for examination. With disap-
pointment he sharply criticized the worldly wise: ‘‘It’s easier to laugh
than to investigate.’’∑∫ Although Lavater burned for months to make a
pilgrimage to Ellwangen to see Gassner for himself, his friends per-
suaded him that Gassner was so controversial that a trip might well do
Lavater’s cause more harm than good. In the meanwhile, too, Lavater
obviously read Sterzinger’s highly critical account of his encounter
with the faith healer, an account that seems to have sobered Lavater,
so that he postponed a meeting to the summer of 1778, well after the
Gassner storm had passed.∑Ω For our purposes the crucial point is that
for Lavater, with all his reservations about rationality, with all his
‘‘lust for wonders’’ (Wunderlust), Gassner presented a potentially key
example of how the spirit works in this world.∏≠
The last sort of theological or religious response to be considered is
that of the Enlightened Protestant North. As we’ve seen, one of the
scholars whom Lavater challenged to investigate the Gassner affair
was Dr. Johann Georg Zimmermann, a fellow Swiss who was serving
as personal physician to the royal court of Hanover. Although the
skeptical Zimmermann refused to get personally involved, in his pop-
ular reflections on solitude and loneliness, he thought about Gass-
ner’s strange effectiveness. For Zimmermann it was obvious that the
Catholic exorcist had cured real illnesses:
Gassner really did heal through his exorcisms, instantly and endur-
ingly, for these really were sick persons, whose cases I know and whom
I and other much more skilled doctors could not heal. But we too
would have healed them if only we had the sort of influence over the
souls of mankind that all doctors ought to have. And yet I believe as
little that the devil causes any sort of illness as I do that one can get rid
of any sort of illness by getting rid of the devil. I am, however, well
persuaded that Gassner cured the nerve-sick by means of his extraordi-
nary mastery over the imagination and nerves of ordinary people.∏∞
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For Zimmermann, Gassner’s effective cures did not work by casting

out demons; instead Gassner had the power of charismatic authority.
In just such a manner St. Anthony had cured people by ‘‘casting
out demons’’ that people did not really have. He was the ‘‘Gassner
of his age.’’ And it was in just this manner as well that his friend,
the great-spirited Lavater, had overwhelmed the feelings or senti-
ments of women and other suggestible people, so that by expecting
miracles, they saw miracles.∏≤ For Dr. Zimmermann the imagination
was stronger that any human understanding, producing joy (the life of
the soul), but also fanaticism and psychic convulsions (the death of the
soul). Gassner’s deceptions, unfortunately, were calculated to take
advantage of just these characteristic human weaknesses. Zimmer-
mann’s emphasis upon the imagination and the sentiments reminds us
forcefully of the burgeoning interest in the ways that the mind could
be found ‘‘in the body’’ and the ‘‘body in the mind,’’ to take Jerome
McGann’s phrase as a pointer to the age of late-eighteenth-century
sentiment and sensibility.∏≥ By the 1770s the belief that the powers of
the human imagination could trigger genuinely physical reactions was
commonplace. Of course, physicians had long held that pregnant
women had to be careful or else their fantasies might affect their un-
born babies; and terrors of various sorts were thought to have physical
effects upon those of ‘‘soft’’ natures. But the cult of sensibility took this
view and generalized it so that all the powers of the imagination were
now thought to have previously unsuspected force, and not just upon
ladies and others of a delicate disposition. This conclusion provided a
means by which intellectuals could comfortably naturalize visions,
religious conversions, the sublime, and miracles of all sorts. No won-
der so many thought they could explain both Gassner’s and Mesmer’s
successes through the startling powers of the Einbildungskraft.
Neology and the Demons
The other major intellectual to whom Lavater appealed was, as

we have seen, Johann Salomo Semler of Halle, this time hoping
that Semler would journey to Ellwangen to investigate the world of
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demons that Gassner had put on display. This was, after all, a topic to
which Semler had devoted himself ever since December of 1759,
when he had first undertaken to debunk the Lohmann affair. But
Semler was also making a name for himself as a ‘‘neologian,’’ or ‘‘neol-
ogist,’’ a critical scholar who mediated between orthodoxy and ra-
tionalism and who drove home the central point that the New Testa-
ment had grown and developed like any other ancient body of texts,
subject to all the human pressures and vicissitudes of any human
artifact. In Semler’s eyes the Word of God should, therefore, never be
equated with the mutable and fallible text of the canonical Scrip-
tures.∏∂ We have already seen what this meant in general terms from
Semler’s works on demons from the 1760s, but it remained one of his
favorite themes.∏∑ No wonder Lavater turned to him.
In that Semler’s methods were historical and philological, the pro-
fessor refused to accept Lavater’s challenge in 1775, much as he had
earlier refused to visit Anna Elisabeth Lohmann. Instead he answered
Lavater in an open letter in the Hallische neue gelehrte Zeitungen,
claiming that Gassner’s cures were not really exorcisms at all, but
psychologically effective faith healings at best (and possibly fraudu-
lent or self-deceived at worst). He had not changed his mind about
the gospel demoniacs, whom he still regarded as essentially madmen
or epileptics, and whom Jesus healed miraculously but without really
ejecting any demons. Of course one might cross-examine Professor
Semler and ask why it was then that Jesus and his disciples so regu-
larly referred to demons and so often conveyed the impression that
such spirits were the effective agents of chronic disorders. Here Sem-
ler relied upon his reading of that now forgotten English literary-
theological battle over the gospel demoniacs, which had taken off in
1737 and which we have already considered briefly. That controversy
had come to a head early (in the years 1737–1739) but had never
entirely died away (for there were continuing contributions to it in
1750, 1760, and then again in the 1770s). In 1775 the key English
work was by the independent Hugh Farmer (1714–1787).∏∏ In these
English controversial works, which number well over twenty titles,
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the crucial theological question was how to interpret the Greek words
daimōn and daimonia in the New Testament.
As we have seen, scholars had realized that while the King James
translators had regularly spoken of ‘‘devil possession,’’ the Greek
New Testament actually spoke in every case of daimōn and daimonion.
So liberal exegetes decided that the sensible thing to do was to trans-
late these words with demon and to speak of demon possession. If this was
a significant difference, it had to make an exegetical difference, and
the next step was to uncouple the devil from demons, claiming with
some justice that their union was a later doctrinal imposition, a theo-
logical interpretation unsupported by the text. It seemed increasingly
clear that the first-century Greek and Jewish world had spoken of
many sorts of unclean spirits or demons, not all of them ranged in an
elaborate military hierarchy or monarchy with Satan at its head. With
some fancy stepping Arthur Ashley Sykes and his partisans could try
to preserve the doctrine of the devil as a fallen angel and the spiritual
origin of sin while at the same time reducing demons to the status of
ghosts and other superstitious illusions.∏π The real exegetical trouble
came, as we have seen, when one asked why Jesus and his apostles
had spent any time curing people of illusory ills, but Semler was
ready enough to follow Balthasar Bekker, Sykes, and Hugh Farmer, in
claiming that Jesus had merely adopted the hopelessly superstitious
language of the Jews of that day. This left the reader wondering
whether Jesus’ accommodation of the common superstitions of his
time meant that he himself bought into them to any extent. If not,
it could appear that he was actually lying or deceiving rather than
merely accommodating the errors of his countrymen. Did he not
stand for the truth, after all?
This question shows just how dangerous the fire was with which
Semler was playing. He could tell from the debates in England from
the 1720s onward that those who took his positions on demons could
easily drift into the denial of miracles altogether, into Arianism or
Socinianism, or into full-scale naturalism. Suspicions of this sort had
cost Johann Jacob Wettstein his pastoral position in Basel in 1730,
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and Wettstein was the sort of biblical scholar Semler admired. Not
only had he produced a new, critical edition of the Greek New Testa-
ment (1751–52) using more manuscripts than previous editors, but
Semler thought highly enough of Wettstein’s earlier Prolegomena to
the study of the New Testament to publish, in 1764, a new edition of
it, with his own editorial comments.∏∫ Semler was careful not to run
the same risk, and repeatedly emphasized throughout his career that
the devil certainly existed, even if his chief effects were on the moral
life of mankind, rather than upon the body.∏Ω He essentially argued
that ‘‘demon possession’’ was merely the term Jesus used to mean
madness, but as we have seen, it was conceivable that Jesus had used
the expression because he had more important things on his mind
than correcting all the foolish and superstitious errors of his day. Here
Semler’s neologist friend Ernesti drew the line. It was one thing to
claim that the New Testament demons were really only the ‘‘ghosts’’
of the dead, and it was as clear to Ernesti as it was to Semler that
Christians need not accept all the beliefs of the Evangelists them-
selves. But it was too much to claim that the Evangelists (or perhaps
even Jesus) used the false and superstitious idea of demons without
sharing it themselves. To Ernesti that claim seemed flatly heretical
and dangerous. So, Semler fudged and left himself a loophole; if
finally cornered, he might respond that God could even have made
an exception to His general commitment to reason, and therefore
could have even permitted the existence of genuine, physical demonic
possession.π≠
Reimarus and the Deists
Some of Semler’s contemporaries were ready to go further even

though they too knew that they were running an obvious risk. We
now know that Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), the Ham-
burg philosopher, orientalist, and deist theologian, worked for some
thirty years on a private manuscript which he never dared to publish.
Even after his death, his family kept the secret, and when Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing undertook to publish the ‘‘Fragments’’ of an ‘‘anon-
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ymous’’ (the work we now know as Reimarus’s Apology), he pretended

that he had discovered it in the ducal library in Wolfenbüttel, where
he was librarian.π∞ The publication in the 1770s of these Fragments
provoked what was surely the most important theological contro-
versy of the German Enlightenment, one that set off shock waves into
the nineteenth century, affecting generations of work on the life of
Jesus. In that work, Reimarus moved beyond common platitudes such
as God’s benign attitude toward mankind, his reasonable rule, and the
way in which all religious truths must accord with nature and reason.
In his Apologie and in the Fragments of it that Lessing published,
Reimarus argued that we have no good reason to think that the Old or
New Testaments were the inspired Word of God, no reason to accept
the miracles they recount, and above all, no reason to deny that Jesus
was simply mistaken about his role as the Messiah. In the view of
Reimarus, the disciples probably stole the corpse of their crucified
leader and then falsified the accounts of his resurrection, proceeding
to create a miraculous religion in place of the wise and morally uplift-
ing teachings of Jesus. All talk of biblical revelation was therefore
deceptive nonsense. It is now well known that Reimarus had studied
the English deists carefully, but no one to my knowledge has paid any
attention to his treatment of demonic possession.π≤
Reimarus dealt with the figure of Satan and with Jesus’ false mira-
cles in several places,π≥ but he dealt with demons most explicitly in a
discussion of the apostles’ use of ‘‘miracles’’ as a means to spread
the newly invented religion. Reimarus emphasized that Jesus only
worked his apparent cures where people believed in him, and one
important problem was that others actually seemed to work such
wonders as well, men whom Jesus characterized as false Christs and
false prophets, who used the power of Satan (Mt 24:24; 2 Thes 2:9–
11). But all of these wonders and miracles were false. Echoing the
fashionable anti-Jewish sentiments of the eighteenth century (includ-
ing even some of the Enlightened), he held that demonic possession
flourished in those days because the Jewish people were so supersti-
tious that they regarded melancholy and madness, or indeed all dis-
eases, as originating in evil spirits.π∂ ‘‘In this way all of these became
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supernatural among the Jews and Christians of those days, both the
diseases and their healing. And the devil back then and the false
prophets too, using his help, could also work signs and wonders,
which could not be distinguished from the true, and so even the
chosen faithful could have been easily seduced.’’π∑
For modern Christians, however, the question was not only whether
God could have worked miracles in order to achieve his purposes.
‘‘Instead, [the question was] whether he actually did them and for this
specific purpose.’’ To answer that question one needed the witness and
narrative of other people who could not have been mistaken in their
accounts. Unfortunately, if one assumed that miracle accounts were
reliable because the narrators were ‘‘viros theopneustos’’ (men in-
spired by God), ‘‘then we land in a vicious circle, for the miracles prove
their Theopneustie [divine inspiration], while their Theopneustie de-
pends upon the miracles, without which no person could be free of
human errors and weaknesses.’’π∏
With respect to the demonically possessed, Reimarus remarked
acidly that all of these stories ‘‘depend on the false opinion of the Jews
of that time that all diseases, and especially epilepsy and madness,
came from evil spirits, who took over the body and soul of men, and
who had to be expelled by a higher power and by specific words and
other means.’’ He added that the recognition of the possessed as
epileptics and madmen was beginning to dawn on ‘‘reasonable theo-
logians,’’ citing Balthasar Bekker, Arthur Ashley Sykes, and Nathaniel
Lardner, and later Conyers Middleton. But ‘‘where people have so
little understanding of nature and are so superstitious that they im-
mediately think of supernatural causes, speak at once of demonic
possessions and the conjuration of spirits, where Satan can perform
miracles just as easily as God himself, there is the real market for
thaumaturges [wonder workers], who can then make their illusions.’’
Thus Jesus and his disciples betrayed either their own superstition
by blaming the devil for the faults of nature, or they exploited the false
opinions of the common people in order to obtain for themselves a
respect they did not deserve. Why didn’t Jesus explain to his disciples
just how the false Christs to come would perform false miracles? How
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did they perform their tricks? Why not teach how to uncover their
frauds? The disciples might have received a sure criterion by which
false miracles could be distinguished from the true so that one could
not be deceived. But no, Jesus did not do this because his miracles too
were ‘‘suspect’’; even he could not work wonders where people did
not believe in him or when the Scribes and Pharisees demanded mira-
cles.ππ Obviously Reimarus had no time for fine talk about Jesus’
accommodation or his will to reform the superstitions of the Jews; for
Reimarus, Jesus and his apostles were part of the problem. So we can
easily see that in his speculations, Semler was coming close to out-
right deism.π∫ No wonder Orthodox Lutherans held tightly to more
traditional views. Even if recent cases of Catholic possession and
exorcism were nonsense in their eyes, that provided no reason for
them to doubt the literal reality of possession and healing in the New
Testament.
The Response of the Orthodox
The most zealous ‘‘advocate for the devil’’ was probably Heinrich
Martin Gottfried Köster (1734–1802), a well-known historian, pas-
tor, and writer on children’s education in Giessen.πΩ In a sarcastic
pamphlet entitled ‘‘Humble Plea for Instruction from the Great Men
Who Don’t Believe in the Devil,’’ Köster heaped scorn on those who
seemed to be claiming to be stronger than Christ and all his apostles.
For the Savior only weakened the devil and the associated Jewish
superstitions, but the so-called ‘‘great men,’’ by which he seems to
have meant not only Semler but also the ‘‘naturalists,’’ had banned the
devil entirely and threatened to turn Christianity into nothing more
than empty moralizing (‘‘eine blosse Moral’’).∫≠ If doctrine is to be
simply chosen freely, why not get rid of the atonement, original sin,
Christ’s divinity, and hell as well? Once we turn the demon-possessed
into sick people, then it’s easy to turn the devil into a mere ‘‘un-thing’’
(‘‘Unding’’), but where in Scripture was there any hint that Jesus
cynically used the prejudices or superstitions of his listeners? And
why should we think that God could not have given the devil the
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power to harm people? Just because God was wise, just, and good?
Köster realized that this was a merely a priori argument that would
eviscerate Scripture if it were turned loose. Essentially Köster insisted
that we have no right to judge what was ‘‘unnecessary’’ in Scripture,
for if we arrogate to ourselves the right to decide on doctrine, we
could wind up with nothing more than our own prejudices. Chris-
tianity would become a mere compilation of our own whims and
desires. And yet, Köster affirmed, there were many cases in Scripture
where we are asked to believe because we have witnesses or solid
accounts of experiences, even though we do not know why something
is so. Why is the devil in the world? We don’t know. Why is God a
trinity? We don’t know, but God must have His own good reasons.∫∞
With this keen-eyed attack, Köster did not disarm the neologist Sem-
ler or ‘‘naturalists’’ such as Reimarus, but he surely placed his finger
on a sore point. Indeed, how could Semler claim that he was treating
Holy Scripture as a human document and still retain a sense of divine
revelation?
Köster did not let it go at that. Between 1778 and 1797 he pub-
lished a journal that reported on the ‘‘latest religious phenomena,’’
and was keen to record the news on the demonic front. He noticed,
for example, that in response to the ‘‘Humble Plea’’ of 1775, many
learned men had written to defend their ideas while denying that they
were ‘‘great men.’’ Now Köster turned to the interpretation of the
New Testament and the claim of some that the devil could not even
be found there. To be sure, no one denied that daimōn and diabolos
appeared as words, but the real question was what they meant. Should
one claim that all the tricky passages of Scripture were simply figura-
tive? Clearly not. But Semler and the English demonologists had also
emphasized that superstitious Jewish ideas of demons had prolifer-
ated after the Babylonian Captivity. But, even granting that, could it
matter crucially where or when the Jews had obtained their ideas?
The real test of doctrine, in Köster’s view, was whether the Jews were
mistaken in believing their world full of demons and whether such an
idea was totally foolish and contrary to reason; actually, as far as
Köster was concerned, the devil and demons made a lot of sense.∫≤
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By 1778 Köster was able to review a host of responses that his little
pamphlet had generated. Obviously the dispute had touched a sensi-
tive nerve. Johann Carl Bonnet, pastor in Niederkirchen in the Palat-
inate, for example, composed a ‘‘Most Humble Answer by a Minor
Rural Pastor to the Humble Plea’’ (Demüthigste Antwort eines geringen
Landgeistlichen auf die demüthige Bitte um Belehrung and die grossen
Männer, welche keinen Teufel glauben), in which he claimed to believe in
the existence of a devil but denied that Christians can obtain any clear
view of his actions or powers from Scripture. Surely no one should
deny that Jesus and his disciples often used picturesque and figurative
language, and they were not deceiving anyone in so doing. Similarly,
the ancient Jews were full of foolish prejudices and superstitions that
Christians could not be expected to believe. So in the end, Bonnet
insisted on a devil, but not necessarily a personal devil.∫≥
Another contribution of this sort came from an unknown author
who sarcastically asked, ‘‘So Is the Devil Really Now a Nothing?’’
(Sollte der Teufel wirklich ein Unding seyn? eine Frage und Bitte an die
Theologen unserer Zeit). Explicitly attacking Semler and Teller, and im-
plicitly Friedrich Nicolai’s Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek as well, the
author claimed that the devil was much more than merely a ‘‘Chaldean
fantasy.’’ It was true that modern philosophers thirty years earlier
asserted that whatever they could not understand could not exist, ‘‘but
now that in our day we place more weight on experience and wit-
nesses, and now that philosophers no longer say that this or that
cannot be just because it does not seem possible to them,’’ it seemed
better to say that many things exist of which we have no understand-
ing. Even the recent discoveries of science seemed to strengthen this
conviction, for the most recent years had brought news of ‘‘an animal
in the northern waters that is as large as an island’’; of a polyp which
could be cut into pieces, but whose pieces could grow into a whole
worm again; and of an insect (‘‘das Radthier’’) which could be dried
out for more than two years and then come to life again. Scholars did
not doubt the existence of such creatures, and similarly should not
doubt the well-attested existence of demons. Since he was writing to
theologians, the author assumed that he did not have to defend the
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credibility of Scripture and could confine himself to the question of

whether the Bible gave witness to the existence of Satan. He regarded
that question as open and shut. If one doubted so well-attested ideas,
‘‘then there will be no certainty in any biblical exegesis at all.’’∫∂
In answer to this little pamphlet Pastor Conrad H. Runge (1731–
1792) of St. Ansgar’s in Bremen wrote a stout volume of 426 pages.
He first ridiculed the ignorance of the anonymous author, who evi-
dently knew neither the requisite ancient languages nor the rules of
scriptural interpretation and so ran the risk of vastly exaggerating the
role of the devil and of demons in the world. Both the heathens and
Roman Catholic priests exercised their dominion, Runge claimed, by
inculcating an unreasoning fear of demons in the minds of simple
people. With such fears one could destroy all morality and all knowl-
edge of God, Providence, and religion. With a great show of learning,
Runge claimed that his pamphlet opponent had ignored important
distinctions and thrown out wild allegations of Socinianism and Sad-
duceeism. He did admit, however, that certain modern theologians
such as Bekker, Wagstaff, and Lardner ‘‘and our recent Germans’’ had
indeed gone far toward allegorizing all of Scripture in an effort to get
rid of the devil, but one could not easily escape the fact that Jesus and
His apostles did use figurative language, allegories, and parables, thus
posing serious problems for the modern interpreter. It seemed un-
deniable that a full doctrine of the devil had developed late in the Old
Testament and that Chaldean influence was likely, but this showed
the wisdom of God in not overburdening the Jews with all of the truth
too early in their spiritual life. In theology Runge seems to have
favored some of the views of Bishop Warburton (for whom demonic
influence was mental and moral rather than physical), Hugh Farmer,
and other English authors.∫∑ His efforts to mediate between Semler
and the credulous had produced a dust storm of erudition and little
clarity.
These publications brought Köster back into the fray, and he con-
centrated on the now extremely contentious issue of whether Jewish
ideas of demons were nothing more than superstitious imports from
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Chaldean culture. With an enviable grasp of the requisite languages,

he tried to show that the origins of Jewish beliefs and ideas were not
so easily categorized and dismissed.∫∏ In his Recent Religious Phenom-
ena for 1778, Köster continued to blister those who published tire-
some little pamphlets that only confused the major issues and pro-
voked anger and strife. It was becoming hard to know what the really
important points were. But by 1778 the visionary ideas and experi-
ences of Emmanuel Swedenborg (or at least someone writing in the
name of Swedenborg) had been stirred into the mix, and Lutherans
were also troubled by a massive but anonymous ‘‘Attempt at a Biblical
Demonology’’ (actually by Otto Justus Basilius Hesse) which Semler
had published with an introduction.∫π Köster protested that even if
the ‘‘possessions’’ recounted in the New Testament were only dis-
eases that doctors now recognize as natural, one might still attribute
the diseases to the devil, and this dissolved into the question ‘‘whether
a spirit can have effects in a body’’; but that question was easily an-
swered even by doctors, for everyone knew how much force the soul
has through ‘‘the stirred up force of imagination in the body.’’ If the
soul can do this in its own body, then it seemed true enough that
another spirit could do the same, especially in view of the fact that we
do not really understand much about the nature of spirits.∫∫ Köster
conceded that Hugh Farmer’s essay on biblical demonology was the
‘‘most prominent’’ of the writings against a literal interpretation of
demoniac possession, but then mounted a refutation aimed at most of
its assertions.∫Ω
Köster also noticed that while the Protestant debate concerned the
powers of demons and the devil, the Catholic debate about Gassner
concentrated rather upon the reality of Gassner’s cures, and therefore
had a different center of gravity. That was not the whole truth, how-
ever, and even he took note of an anonymous Catholic work on the
theory of diabolical effects in this world.Ω≠ With a refreshing open-
ness to Evangelical authors as well as to the whole of church history,
this work defended the notion of demonic possession and the con-
tinuing need for exorcism. The mere fact that superstitions had crept
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into such practices did not disprove the central core. Here again,
Köster revealed that in opposing the ‘‘naturalists,’’ he was as willing as
Lavater to seek help among the Catholics.Ω∞
These polemical publications produced at least one conversion, a
testimony to the fact that vehement debate sometimes (but rarely)
did more than amply offend one’s opponents. Christian Wilhelm
Kindleben (1748–1785), the pastor and poet (and author of the well-
known student drinking song ‘‘Gaudeamus Igitur,’’ 1781) admitted in
1779 that he had written the little book proving the ‘‘nonexistence’’ of
the devil, but after reading Köster and the other contributions to this
noisy debate, he was ready to concede that the devil does exist, that he
could indeed possess human beings, and that medical explanations
could not account for all of the sufferings that were called demonic.Ω≤
In his view, the struggle over the devil was ‘‘epoch-making in the
learned annals of the eighteenth century,’’ one in which scholars had
written ‘‘almost a whole library in miniature concerning the doctrine
of the devil.’’ He now ruefully admitted that he had by no means
disproved the existence of the devil and went further to confess that in
his view the exegetical theory of accommodation had been misused or
extended so far that Holy Scripture was in danger of being trans-
formed into a mass of figural imaginings. He trusted Semler’s theory
no more and vowed to write no more about the devil.Ω≥ Reviewing this
retractatio, Köster laughed at Kindleben’s foolish hope that he might
single-handedly end the controversy over demons by finally admit-
ting that the devil did indeed have earthly powers, and indeed the
theological struggle continued on into the 1780s, although with less
intensity.Ω∂
Conclusion
Gassner’s healings thus produced a deep and wide theological de-

bate, both among Roman Catholics and among German Protestants.
We have here taken the time to notice only the most often discussed
or the deepest issues, but it is truly surprising how many persons
contributed to these disputes and how widely they were reported in
116
INTERPRETATION
the journals and newspapers of the day. In this chapter we have also
taken notice only of the religious issues, but there were contribu-
tions from the medical establishment and from politically motivated
writers as well. Some of these will form a basis for the fifth chapter,
where I will outline the implicit rules of these debates, the kind of
decorum that developed or broke down. But here we may conclude
that for Catholics the chief questions were two: (1) whether the devil
could now cause the sorts of physical ills Gassner’s patients presented
and (2) whether Gassner’s blessings and exorcisms were appropriate.
The Catholic world was badly divided on these issues in the 1770s,
and Gassner provided a focal point for many of these divisions. For
German and Swiss Protestants, however, the main issue raised by
Gassner was not whether the devil could possess people nowadays
and certainly not whether exorcism worked. Most Protestants agreed
that this was an ill-founded notion and a superstitious practice. But
the debate had triggered a much more important debate among
Evangelicals about the interpretation of Scripture. Johann Salomo
Semler found in the current disputes over demonic possession such a
fascinating and vexing problem that he became obsessed with demon-
ology, using it as a pivot on which to turn his biblical exegesis in a new
direction. Semler’s neological theology and the English writers upon
whom he depended went far toward transforming the Bible into a
simple mirror of their own moral thoughts. Difficult passages and
‘‘obsolete’’ ideas could be treated as so much heathen mythology or
Jewish superstition and then swept away with sovereign contempt;
but as critics noted, there was little assurance that this was really what
God had meant when he set down his Word in flesh and ink. So the
‘‘third crisis’’ of the devil in the eighteenth century raised large and
troubling problems for both Catholics and Protestants, problems that
have not disappeared over the past two centuries even though they
now appear in different dress.
117
five
CONVERSATION AND RIDICULE
Ridicule often decides things better than bitter argument.

—Horace, Satires, 1.10, 14–15
It is easier to laugh than to investigate.

—Johann Caspar Lavater (Frankfurt, 1775)
When we consider the form of the Gassner controversy, one re-

markable feature stands out: the unbridled joy several of the combat-
ants felt in laughing at their opponents. The lust for laughter was not
quite legitimate in the eighteenth century, however. Critics adopted
medical analogies to condemn the barbarous ferocity, the ‘‘furor’’ of
the satirist, his blood lust for revenge or for conquest. Moralists in
Germany condemned satire and allied forms of criticism as failures of
neighborly love, and made it hard to claim that one had only the
welfare of one’s foolish antagonist at heart.∞ And yet the claims of
ridicule continued to make their way. One reason was that many of
the foundational works of Western literature and religion seemed to
model or even authorize sarcasm and the satirical correction of oth-
ers’ errors. Even God Himself could be found ridiculing His own
creatures; when He discovered Adam’s disobedience in the Garden,
He remarked with sarcastic humor: ‘‘Behold, the man [Adam] has
become like one of us, knowing good and evil’’ (Gn 3:22). Of course
satire, sarcasm, and ridicule are not identical, but they all depend
upon witty deprecation, a derision that bites.
Some were even willing to apply the test of laughter to truth itself.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, was famous
throughout the eighteenth century, and throughout Enlightened
Germany, for claiming that one of the tests of truth was ridicule.≤
‘‘Truth, ’tis supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal
lights, or natural mediums, by which things are to be viewed . . . is
118
ridicule itself, or that manner of proof by which we discern whatever

is liable to just raillery in any subject.’’ It is not clear that he meant this
in a fully comprehensive sense, and exactly what he did mean has been
open to much discussion, but in his Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, he
asked, ‘‘How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in
reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?’’≥ What was
striking in this phrase was Shaftesbury’s genial willingness to submit
his own thoughts, and even the most reverend and widespread cul-
tural assumptions, to raillery, to see how they might fare. It’s another
question how his thoughts did fare in fact, but the notion that ridicule
was an effective, perhaps the only effective, antidote to resolute non-
sense and ‘‘fanaticism’’ became widespread in the eighteenth century.
There was indeed an eighteenth-century debate over the status of
ridicule, one in which English poets and theologians participated, and
which concluded around mid-century with the sense that ridicule
could be overdone, that this ‘‘test of truth’’ was too harsh to be relied
upon. Despite the urgings of restraint, modesty, and caution, how-
ever, laughter was irrepressible. In German discourse of the eigh-
teenth century, ridicule, satire, parody, and witty attack became ever
more popular literary forms. Satirists now singled out not only lower-
class enthusiasm and fanaticism, but almost any issue on which the
writer found that he could not quite specify exactly where he dis-
agreed with an opponent.∂ Obviously no one claims that literary ridi-
cule was invented in the eighteenth century. Surely any acquaintance
with Horace and Juvenal, to say nothing of the vulgar cartoons
and scatological pamphlets of the German Reformation, would be
enough to immunize us against such an oversimplification. But it does
appear that writers of the eighteenth century defended the use of
witty attack as a moral stance and perfected its application to serious
issues in a way that marks a contrast with earlier centuries.∑ Aca-
demics remained uncomfortable, however, with the application of
raillery to the sober products of their lucubrations and tried to dis-
tinguish ‘‘sociable jesting’’ from raillery.∏
Laughter seemed to violate the standards of academic debate, not
because it was too harsh but because it diverted attention from the
119
matter at hand. At that time, a few basic rules structured serious

controversies. Anne Goldgar has recently emphasized such rules of
politeness and restraint as the bonds that tied the republic of letters
together, but these rules also served to make it difficult to discuss
certain matters at all.π This is only one part of the picture, however,
for literary figures did in fact often descend into bitter personal vi-
tuperation. As Martin Gierl has described them, the rules of scholarly
engagement derived from university disputations, and while they reg-
ularly allowed insult and personal invective, they tended to produce
controversies that systematically strove to annihilate any opposition
by syllogism.∫ Although some cautious members of the republic of
letters may have discovered that it was safer elegantly to say nothing
than to attack another prominent member, in fact the debates of the
Enlightenment were not so vapid as the demands of politeness re-
quired. Instead many theological or legal controversies were both
personal and total. And yet a properly constructed debate could pro-
ceed only if the various contestants agreed on certain ground rules:
what would count as evidence, for example, or what body of texts
constituted the body of acceptable evidence. Among Lutherans, for
example, it was a telling conclusion if one could show that an oppo-
nent’s statement did not comport well with the ‘‘symbolic books,’’ the
confessional norms and creeds of the Lutheran Church, while this
would obviously be an ineffective point in argument with others. In
the Gassner controversy, therefore, basic problems were bound to
arise. When Lutherans, Reformed, and Catholics took part in a com-
mon controversy, it was impossible to appeal to any accepted form of
evidence, and hopeless to attempt to establish a common ground of
decisive, that is, authoritative, texts.
These difficulties were compounded by the dramatic rise in literacy
in eighteenth-century Germany and the even more explosive growth
in the publication of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and journals of
all sorts. Novels, for example, rose from being no more than 2.6
percent of the Leipzig book catalogue offerings in 1740, to 4 percent
in 1770, to 11.7 percent in 1800, a number that finally rivaled the
percentage of religious works on sale (which had fallen to 13.5 per-
120
cent of all titles by 1800).Ω At the same time, Latin was giving way to
German in the vast majority of books. The percentage of Latin books
listed for sale in Leipzig (a number that unfortunately does not take
account of Latin Catholic publishing in the South) fell from 38 per-
cent in 1700 to 28 percent in 1740 to 14 percent in 1770. By 1800
this percentage had fallen to only 4 percent.∞≠ As Rolf Engelsing has
pointed out, readers also learned to read ‘‘extensively,’’ rather than
repeatedly reading the same small number of texts ‘‘intensively.’’∞∞
Book production in general expanded rapidly. In 1740 the book cata-
logues of Frankfurt and Leipzig allow us to reckon that about 750
new books were published annually; by 1780 the Leipzig book fair
listed 2,000 German titles, and by the 1790s contemporaries esti-
mated new book production at about 5,000 per year, a sevenfold
increase in fifty years.∞≤ By the beginning of the nineteenth century
this number had risen to about 7,000.∞≥
Books were not read by only one purchaser either. The best esti-
mates suggest that for every book one might reasonably count on
twenty readers, who encountered books in taverns, reading clubs, or
in lending libraries. With the lack of effective copyright protections
and despite the consequent massive dangers of pirated reprints, pub-
lishers were nonetheless able to bump up print runs from several
hundred in 1750 to between one and two thousand in the 1780s,
according to the Journal von und für Deutschland.∞∂ Some contempo-
raries bemoaned the epidemic of reading, stimulated by what they
called ‘‘Vielschreiberei,’’ or ‘‘endless scribbling.’’∞∑ As more readers
were reading more sorts of material in less and less structured en-
vironments, it became impossible to control the decorum of public
debate. The ground rules shifted.
The subject matter of books also shifted, in certain areas decisively
in just this period. In 1770 about one-quarter of all books sold at
the book fairs were theological or religious in content; by 1780
their proportion had fallen to about 18 percent; and by 1800 they
made up about 13.5 percent, although these numbers do not take into
account the higher rates of religious publication in the South (see
table 5.1).∞∏ Percentages do not tell the whole story, though, because
121
Table 5.1 New Titles Listed at the Easter Book Fair, 1740–1800
1740 1770 1800
Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent
All titles 755 100% 1,144 100% 2,569 100%

Religious literature total 291 38.5% 280 24.5% 348 13.5%
Sermons/devotional and 144 19.1% 124 10.8% 149 5.8%
edifying literature
Fine arts and letters total 44 5.8% 188 16.4% 551 21.4%
Poetic works 32 4.2% 153 13.4% 424 16.5%
Poems 10 1.3% 37 3.2% 34 1.3%
Dramas 2 0.3% 42 3.7% 64 2.5%
Narrative literature and 20 2.6% 46 4.0% 300 11.7%
novels
Source: Based on Erich Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit, oder, Die Verwandlung des
Lesers: Mentalitätswandel um 1800 (Stuttgart, 1987), p. 44. Schön relies upon the
data in Jentzsch, Der deutsch-lateinische Büchermarkt, and emphasizes that they
therefore tell us only about new titles, rather than about the whole market, which
obviously included reprints and books published in previous years but not yet sold
out. They also pay no attention to the rapidly growing numbers of pirated editions
after 1765.
religious literature did not decline in absolute numbers; it actually

grew slightly, rising from 291 titles in 1740 to 348 titles in 1800.
Remarkably, the declining proportion of ‘‘sermons, devotional and
edifying literature’’ was almost exactly replaced by the growing cate-
gory of ‘‘fine arts and letters.’’ Taken together, they continued to
make up about a quarter of all books sold in Germany from 1740 to
1800. The point of relevance for the Gassner controversy is that most
of the works in this struggle were both entertaining and instructive,
religious but narrative as well, amusing and amazing. Those who
wrote for or against the exorcist from Klösterle had learned how to
reach out to a new audience of readers, who were no longer interested
in sermons but wanted edification along with entertainment.
Journals and newspapers also began to take up a serious part of the
publishing spectrum. Looking over the whole eighteenth century
122
we have records of about four thousand German-language journals,

some of which lived only for a few issues, but others of which had long
runs. Indeed, the German Enlightenment depended overwhelmingly
upon journals.∞π One of the most important of all was Friedrich Nico-
lai’s Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (Berlin), which he founded in 1765
and faithfully published for forty-five years (producing 264 volumes
in all, and employing 433 collaborators).∞∫ For many North Germans
this review may have been the only way they had of learning about the
Gassner scandal, along with all the other literary controversies of the
age. In the last decades of the eighteenth century Nicolai printed
1,800 copies of each issue of his learned journal and managed to
market his journal very widely.∞Ω Scores of cities also enjoyed a new
level of information and Enlightened opinion in a so-called Intel-
ligenzblatt, but most of them included only local or regional informa-
tion and could not well fill the function of a national newspaper. By
the 1770s, however, political journals were also making their mark—
among them Christoph Martin Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur, with
print runs of 1,500 per issue (1773–1810), August Ludwig Schlözer’s
Briefwechsel meist historischen und politischen Inhalts (later retitled the
Staatsanzeigen) (1776–1782; 1782–1793), Heinrich Christian Boie’s
Deutsches Museum (1776–1788), with usual print runs of 1,000—but
most of them, including Schlözer, Wieland, and Boie, paid no atten-
tion to the Gassner affair. The one journal that competed with the
Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek in bringing Gassner to general notice
was Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart’s Deutsche Chronik (Augs-
burg and Ulm, 1774–1777), to which we will turn in a moment.≤≠
Despite all the recent talk about a reading explosion, however, one
cannot assume that literacy spread with equal speed through all re-
gions and social classes. Peasants were sometimes slow to see the
advantages of reading, and schooling remained inaccessible for many
of them. Even so, when books were aimed at such readers, remarkable
successes could be registered. As far as mere publishing success went,
Eberhard von Rochow’s elementary reading book Der Kinderfreund
dwarfed all other efforts, bursting forth in the years 1776–1780
in nearly two hundred editions and over 100,000 copies. Similarly
123
Rudolf Zacharias Becker’s Noth und Hilfsbuchlein für Bauersleut (Help

in Times of Need for Peasants) appeared in 1788 and had already sold
35,000 copies by September of that year. Down to 1798, it had been
printed in 150,000 copies, most of them in pirated editions, and by
1811 fully a million copies had been distributed. Of course there is no
assurance that this book, often distributed for free, was always read,
but the sheer numbers are impressive all the same.≤∞ Such children’s
readers and farmer’s advice books were not, however, places where
one might find information about political or religious scandals. Even
so, the rising tide of reading material threatened to swamp traditional
styles of controversy. Contemporaries spoke of a ‘‘Lesewut,’’ a reading
frenzy.≤≤ Luise Mejer, for example, wrote in 1783/84 from Hamburg,
‘‘Here they stuff people with reading the way one stuffs geese with
noodles.’’≤≥ Some critics thought that the new form of extensive read-
ing was addictive and was making readers physically and psychically
sick, alienating them from the world of experience and overstimulat-
ing their imaginations, fostering hypochondria, and undermining the
affective bonds that held households and society together.≤∂ Measur-
ing the actual impact of increased reading is, however, difficult, and
scholars are only beginning to develop methods of assessing what
difference it made.≤∑ Anyone reading through the Gassner contro-
versy is likely to feel overwhelmed, too, by the volume and by the
repetitious character of many of the journal reports and news accounts
gushing out of Ellwangen and Regensburg. The ‘‘reading frenzy’’ and
the ‘‘mania for scribbling’’ were clearly visible in the Gassner scandal.
This dramatic rise in reading and in publication also made it in-
creasingly difficult to maintain the previous standards of argument
by which one signaled exactly which author and which arguments
one meant to answer. With the Gassner controversy, scholars, pas-
tors, and publicists struggled with the simple flood of material to
which they felt obliged to respond. Despite the continuing strength
of Streitsucht, total victory was now all but impossible.
At this point, an ambitious scholar might engage in a detailed dis-
cussion of the roughly 150 works that make up the Gassner contro-
versy in print, an exercise in pedantry that would, I feel sure, have its
124
own discreet charm. Instead let’s examine what the new conditions of
reading and publishing did to the rules of engagement, the form or
structure of debate. Some of these features represent survivals from
previous decades, but often enough even familiar conventions took
on a new significance in the 1770s.
Anonymity
One of the first aspects that spring out at the modern reader of
these debates is the fact that a large proportion of the published works
in this controversy were anonymous. We know, of course, that anony-
mous publication was the standard refuge of those who feared the
wrath of censors and intolerant governments. The curious fact about
many of the anonymous books and pamphlets about Gassner, how-
ever, is that they were often published in towns or territories where
the opinions expressed were perfectly in accord with the ruling ortho-
doxy. In some of these cases, it may well be that authors or publishers
maintained secrecy in order to forestall notoriety and ill favor of a
more unpredictable sort. Other authors seem to have used pseudo-
nyms in order to protect their reputation as sober scholars or pious
clerics, whose dignity might have prohibited the language of the gut-
ter and the coarse invectives. But since scholars were used to hurling
insults at one another, this does not seem to offer a full or convincing
explanation. Sophie Rosenfeld has recently suggested that anonymity
could also be a cosmopolitan strategy of submerging one’s individu-
ality (one’s identity and even one’s locality) in the interests of a more
general, a more universal argument.≤∏ Of the titles listed in Joseph
Hanauer’s bibliography, incomplete as it is, over 75 percent were
lacking an author or gave only a pseudonym.
As we see in table 5.2, an author was correctly identified in only 24
of the 112 publications listed (21 percent). Pseudonyms or teasing
suggestions of the author were given 25 times (22 percent), especially
by the supporters of Gassner. A substantial majority (62 out of 112, or
55 percent) gave no hint of the author, although librarians and histo-
rians have been able to identify the authors for about half of these.
125
Table 5.2 The Gassner Controversy in Print
Author Falsely Pseudon-

Identified Identified ymous No Author Total
Pro-Gassner 3 1 15 37 56
Anti-Gassner 9 0 7 15 31
Neutral 1 0 1 0 2
Special aspects 11 0 2 10 23
Totals 24 1 25 62 112
(21% of 112) (55% of 112)
Source: Data extracted from the incomplete but useful bibliography provided
by Josef Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner und Wunderheiler Johann Joseph
Gassner (1727–1779),’’ Beiträge zur Geschichte des Bistums Regensburg 19
(1985), pp. 306–13.
From the actual titles and the pseudonyms, moreover, one can
begin to understand some of the advantages of anonymity. We find
titles such as these:
≤ A Question: Whether the Catechism on the Doctrine of Spirits Is a Cath-

olic Catechism?≤π
≤ Open Letter from Hofrat von ——— to Hofrat von———, a Member of
the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich, Concerning certain of the
Operations Undertaken during His Stay in Ellwangen by Herr Gassner,
sometime priest of Klösterle≤∫
≤ Sympathy: The Universal Means of Curing All Devilries, for the Use of
the New Philosophy and the Old Religion≤Ω
With titles like these, one could manage to sound open-minded or

elevated or perhaps even witty or sarcastic without having to endure
the consequences. Such titles also took the focus away from the per-
sonal bias or interest of the author in order to concentrate more
126
effectively (less personally) on the issues under discussion. Take a

look at the titles I’ve compiled in my own expanded list, looking only
at the A’s and B’s (in the original language):
≤ ‘‘Francisco dell’ Amavero’’ (pseud. = ‘‘For the Love of Truth’’),

Investigation of Whether Preventive Magic Works≥≠
≤ An Exposé of Gassner’s Miraculous Treatments≥∞
≤ An Exposé of Sterzinger’s Lies, Impertinence, and Ignorance≥≤
≤ An Upright Explanation by a Cleric Concerning Gassner’s Treatments,
Against a Pastor≥≥
≤ A Thorough Description of the Remarkable Phenomenon that Occurred to
a Young Nun, Maria Anna Oberhüber≥∂
≤ Contributions Concerning Gassner’s Sojourn and Activities in Sulzbach≥∑
≤ The Deceptions of the Art of Magic and the Dreams of Witchcraft, or a
Defense of the Academy Lecture Concerning the Commonplace Prejudice
in Favor of Active and Effective Witchcraft≥∏
≤ A Judgment Concerning Gassner’s Miraculous Treatments, by a Pastor
and Zealot for the Catholic Religion≥π
≤ ‘‘Blocksberg’s’’ [the name of a mountain where witches met] Congratula-
tions to . . . Alois Merz concerning His Defense of Witchcraft and Magic≥∫
≤ Letters of a Lady to Her Friend Concerning Gassner’s Miraculous Treat-
ments≥Ω
With titles like these, one could cloak one’s own identity, obviously,
but also present one’s authorial persona in the most favorable or the
most humorous light, as a lover of truth, an honorable priest, a de-
fender of tradition, or sarcastically as a partisan of witches. One could
also attack one’s opponent by ‘‘exposing’’ him, or ‘‘doubting’’ him, or
‘‘querying’’ him, without immediately appearing to do anything more
than defending oneself.
Humility
Another characteristic of many titles is the claim to humility,

a claim that made better sense if the author remained anonymous.
Around 1700 the rules of the Republic of Letters required a becoming
127
modesty and humility, but by 1775 contestants had learned to play

with these rules and to mock them.∂≠ The Gassner controversy pro-
duced works that trumpeted their own humility:
≤ A Humble Request for Instruction from the Great Men Who Do not
Believe in the Devil∂∞
≤ A Most Humble Answer of an Unimportant Rural Pastor to the Humble
Request . . . ∂≤
≤ Devilries of the Eighteenth Century, by the Author of the Humble Re-
quest∂≥
Meanwhile, other authors could then only respond to these ‘‘hum-

ble works’’ by sarcastically referring to their modest efforts, as in the
Instruction for the Author of the Humble Petition to the Great Men Who
Do Not Believe in the Devil,∂∂ or in titles like this: The Answer of an
Unimportant Rural Pastor to the Instruction for the Author of the Humble
Request . . . .∂∑ Professor Heinrich Martin Gottfried Köster even im-
personated the Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg with a work
dealing with these questions, and proclaimed an assumed humility in
his title: Emanuel Swedenborg’s Humble Thanks to the Great Man Who
Has Demonstrated the Nonexistence of the Devil.∂∏
Humility could, of course, be nothing more than appearance, as
Ferdinand Sterzinger sarcastically suggested. When he first met Fa-
ther Gassner in Ellwangen, the priest had closed his eyes, ‘‘no doubt
out of humility’’ (‘‘glaublich aus Demuth’’).∂π Another author apolo-
gized ironically for referring to Gassner only as ‘‘Herr Gassner,’’
without giving him all the ceremonial titles the priest had received
from the Bishop of Regensburg, but he explained that ‘‘since Herr
Gassner is so humble as to deny that he is a miracle worker, he will
surely also be so humble that he won’t insist on these high titles.’’∂∫
Modesty was so highly prized in an author that it was sometimes
the only admirable quality noticed. And one of the more telling
blows against Gassner was that he actually was not modest enough. A
friendly but skeptical author in Prague claimed in an open letter to
Gassner that Gassner’s enemies would shrink back in embarrassment
128
if only the priestly exorcist might display greater caution and mod-
esty.∂Ω But the charge of immodesty could also be used against Gass-
ner’s enemies, as did one tract which accused Sterzinger of attacks on
Gassner that only fed the forces of materialism and free thought. So
long as the church had not declared an official position on the matter,
the author conceded that the Gassnerstreit was a ‘‘Controversia inter
eruditos’’ allowing both arguments pro and contra, but only so long as
participants were ‘‘moderate and modest’’ and avoided libel and lies.∑≠
If one detected instead a whole structure that was un-Catholic, with
thoughts that savored of materialism, and where lies and false stories
festered, there one could justly condemn the immodest author. The
noisy poet and chronicler Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart used
the same criterion to praise an anonymous Lutheran author whose
‘‘modest tones’’ were appropriate to the truth and who was therefore
content merely to smile sympathetically (or ironically), while Gass-
ner’s own tracts, in contrast, seemed ‘‘shallow, miserable, simple, un-
philosophical, or even blasphemous writings that contradicted both
nature and Christianity.’’∑∞
Some readers naturally found anonymity neither humble nor
charming and tried what they could to unmask the secret of the au-
thor’s identity. Indeed, several of the works of the Gassner controversy
reveled in their ‘‘discovery’’ or ‘‘unmasking’’ of an author. Once
known, an author seemed far less impartial, far more devious. The
Augsburg Lutheran Georg Wilhelm Zapf compiled an annotated bib-
liography of the Gassnerstreit, and his first question, perhaps naturally
enough, was who had actually written the many anonymous works.
Some authors made the task easy. Bernhard Schleis lightly cloaked
himself in his treatises as Doct. Schisel (an anagram of Schleis) and
claimed that it was published in Schalbuz (an anagram of Sulzbach),∑≤
while Ferdinand Sterzinger was almost as transparently veiled as
‘‘Francone dell’Amavero.’’∑≥ One of the seductive charms of anonym-
ity, in fact, was the game one played with one’s readers, revealing a
little, and perhaps a little more of one’s identity, without quite giving
oneself away. Many readers found the game amusing, while others
129
sought irritatedly to unmask these nameless scribblers. The unknown

author of ‘‘So Is the Devil Really Now a Nothing?’’ foresaw this
problem and claimed, ‘‘In order that my name not hinder anyone
from speaking his mind impartially, I have withheld it. I am, however,
prepared to reveal it if I notice the slightest necessity, for I am not
ashamed publicly to accept instruction in the eyes of the world.’’∑∂
Pastor Conrad Runge of St. Ansgar’s in Bremen, however, did express
his irritation that the author of ‘‘So Is the Devil Really Now a Noth-
ing?’’ hid behind his anonymity.∑∑ Readers well beyond their youth
will remember a similar puzzlement with the Times Literary Supple-
ment of London, whose reviews not so long ago were unsigned and
whose authors were, therefore, known to only a few but suspected by
many, and constituted a regular topic for discussions in clubs and
college common rooms in Britain.
From lists like these one begins to see an advantage to anonymity
that was more subtle than merely the desire to escape punishment or
opprobrium. But we should not underestimate the threat of punish-
ment. In late December 1774 the Elector Maximilian III Joseph of
Bavaria announced that so long as Gassner’s procedures in Ellwangen
were unclear, the wonderworker was to be prohibited from entering
Bavaria, and no one should publish anything, for or against him.
At the end of December, when Ferdinand Sterzinger published his
scathing account of Gassner’s operations, based on his visit earlier
that month, the elector reprimanded him for what was past and
strictly forbade him to publish anything else on the matter in the
future.∑∏ The result was that Sterzinger regularly disguised his au-
thorship and found willing publishers in Protestant cities who were
willing to take the risk of displeasing the mighty lord of Bavaria.
Occasionally the publishers of controversial authors hid their activi-
ties even more sedulously by listing false or vague places of publica-
tion (‘‘in Germany’’). Only rarely did this practice extend to the decla-
ration of a false date as well, but fairly often publishers would simply
omit crucial information that would permit a reader to know where a
pamphlet came from.
130
Ridicule
One not so lucky was Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739–

1791), the musician, poet, and chronicler who took up residence
in Augsburg in 1774 in order to publish his new twice-weekly
Deutsche Chronik. As a flamboyant publisher, of course, he was hardly
anonymous, but he must have hoped that the fact that Augsburg was
composed of two officially accepted religious groups, Lutheran and
Catholic, would make it possible for his fresh, Enlightened, and ram-
bunctious reports to make their way without trouble. He mistook the
formal status of bi-confessionality for toleration, however, and found
that Augsburg was actually a swarming hornets’ nest of confessional
rivalries, in which joking about religion was seen as disturbing the
peace. As Friedrich Nicolai noticed in his famous travelogue from
1781, ‘‘The Catholics of Augsburg are doubly and triply Catholic,’’
but the same was true of the Protestants.∑π Religious animosities, in
fact, had poisoned the atmosphere of Augsburg. We can use Schu-
bart’s reports to highlight this prominent feature of the Gassner con-
troversy. As modern readers we can’t help noticing that a great deal of
the struggle was carried out in terms of scorn, sarcasm, personal
vituperation, ridicule, and raillery. The pretense of humility and po-
liteness did not inhibit most writers from expressing the most blatant
forms of personal attack.
Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart has a fair claim to being the
first political journalist in Germany, a fact that is all the more extraor-
dinary because he succeeded for over three years in this role even
though he lived in the German South and Southwest, where journal-
ism even of a softly moral sort was rare, and politically critical voices
were not tolerated.∑∫ Schubart was one of the first German observers
to celebrate the American Revolution and its assault upon tyrannical
authorities.∑Ω His warm-hearted patriotism, his enthusiastic sympa-
thies for what became known as the Sturm und Drang, and his emo-
tional, popular verses have long been the subject of scholarly analysis.
Here, however, we are more interested in Schubart’s vehement
131
opposition to the Jesuits and in his bold or frankly impertinent attacks

upon Johann Joseph Gassner. He may well have placed himself and
his journal in Augsburg with the hope that the more tolerant atmo-
sphere of a city in which Protestants and Catholics had been living
together for over two hundred years might offer his efforts the politi-
cal space that would allow him to speak his mind. If so, he was sadly
misinformed. Ever since 1686 there had been three Catholic censors
who monitored Catholic writings and three Protestant censors who
controlled non-Catholic writing.∏≠ By the mid-eighteenth century
new laws sought to protect Augsburg from dangerous views of all
sorts,∏∞ but Schubart took aim at German censorship laws in his very
first issue (31 March 1774). By April the many ex-Jesuits who had
gathered in Augsburg were complaining of Schubart’s insulting pres-
ence, his jokes about Catholic priests, and his warm admiration of
Pope Clement XIV, because of his courage in dissolving the Jesuit
order just a year earlier.∏≤ By late spring, the Deutsche Chronik had
been forced out of Augsburg, finding a publisher in Ulm instead, even
though Schubart himself stayed on in Augsburg and kept up a steady
flow of crackling anti-Jesuit invective.
Schubart’s troubles were, however, only partly connected to the ex-
Jesuits and to their leader Alois März (Merz), S.J., the inflamma-
tory ‘‘Kontroversprediger’’ of Augsburg’s cathedral. On 12 Decem-
ber 1774 (Deutsche Chronik, vol. 1, Stück 74, p. 589) he reported on
Johann Joseph Gassner’s healing campaign: ‘‘The pastor of Klösterle
Gassner has come forth to deceive the stupid rabble of Swabia. He’s
healing cripples, goiters, and epilepsies—not with medicines but
just by laying on his high-priesterly hand. Recently he published a
glorious book on how to resist the devil if he’s kicking up a rumpus
in houses or in people. And there are thousands of people around
me who believe this nonsense—Saint Socrates, have mercy on me!
When will we ever stop falling for this folly [literally, ‘‘this Swabian
nonsense’’: ‘‘Wann hören wir doch einmal auf, Schwabenstreiche zu
machen’’]?’’
In fact, Gassner grew into an obsession for Schubart, who com-
mented over twenty times in the next couple of years upon the teach-
132
ings and career of the exorcist.∏≥ It didn’t help that the ex-Jesuits, and
especially Merz, were among Gassner’s most fervent and frequent
supporters. Schubart perfected a tone of cackling, high raillery. In the
issue for 29 December 1774, for example, he claimed that someone
had asked him why Berlin, Paris, and London had been spared the
current wave of demonic possession; Schubart answered that evi-
dently the devil ‘‘preferred to possess pigs,’’ a term with which he
again laughed at the to him hopeless superstitions of his region,
‘‘where to the honor of the human understanding, ghosts and witch
stories, demonic possessions and exorcisms are once again all the
rage’’ (Deutsche Chronik, vol. 1, Stück 79 [29 December 1774], p. 630).
The flow of sarcasm and ridicule was unstoppable, even after Schu-
bart was forced out of Augsburg at the end of 1774. By March 1775 he
was invoking the spirits of Juvenal, Persius, and Lucian, along with
modern satirists Butler, Swift, and Christian Ludwig Liskow (1701–
1760) or Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabner (1714–1771). They would have
recognized the fool who has emerged from Wolf ’s Augsburg publish-
ing house ‘‘with his wooden cudgel, trying to club’’ his various crit-
ics ‘‘but especially me’’ (Deutsche Chronik, vol. 2, Stück 20 [9 March
1775], pp. 158–60).
Again and again Schubart expressed his embarrassment that while
Berlin cultivated an air of freedom, and while the rest of Europe could
take pride in their Enlightened geniuses (naming Haller, Jerusalem,
Spalding, Mendelssohn, Klopstock, Home and Hume, Robertson,
Rousseau, Voltaire, and a host of Enlightened physicians), the poor
Swabians were now exercised by exorcists and devils. When Gassner
moved from Ellwangen to Regensburg in the summer of 1775, Schu-
bart sarcastically thanked him for ‘‘driving out of our region several
thousand million devils, all according to protocols, so that we are now
as clean as if we’d been swept by a broom’’ (Deutsche Chronik, vol. 2,
Stück 39 [15 March 1775], p. 311). So it was with peals of malicious
laughter that Schubart greeted the news that the Emperor Joseph II
had ordered an end to Gassner’s flamboyant exorcising (Deutsche
Chronik, vol. 2, Stück 101 [18 December 1775], pp. 801–3).
For these joyous outbursts of ridicule, for his subversive disrespect
133
for censorship, and for the social, political, and religious proprieties
of the German Southwest, Schubart paid a high price. On 23 January
1777 he was lured from his safe haven in the imperial city of Ulm into
Württemberg territory, where he was arrested on orders from Duke
Karl Eugen and thrown in prison at the Hohenasperg, near Lud-
wigsburg, without a trial.∏∂ There he endured an unheated room,
straw bedding, inadequate food, and solitary confinement, with only a
Bible to read. When he emerged ten years later, he was a broken man,
finally ready to play the subservient lapdog to his ducal lord for the
four years that remained to him. When he looked back on his short
career in the 1770s as a liberated political journalist, Schubart told his
son that his attack on Gassner had formed the ‘‘second stone’’ in the
vault of his prison cell.∏∑ It seems clear in retrospect that Duke Karl
Eugen was prompted to remove the frivolous and disrespectful Schu-
bart for holding the ruling classes of Europe, and specifically the duke
of Württemberg, in total contempt.∏∏ Die Deutsche Chronik had con-
tributed in a revolutionary way to the transformation of German
journalism, but for Schubart, perhaps to our surprise, it was his re-
ligious zeal, his immoderate and satirical assault upon the ex-Jesuits
and upon Gassner that had sealed his fate.
Perhaps he was right. Certainly Gassner’s supporters were more
incensed at Schubart’s sarcastic and vehement laughter than by al-
most any other sort of criticism. Even Sterzinger’s biting accounts
failed to arouse the same level of indignation. Schubart’s tone, his
easy, flippant, emotional style and his overweening Protestant confi-
dence drove Catholic traditionalists wild with rage. The anonymous
author of one tract despised Schubart, the ‘‘Kronickschreiber,’’ who
dared to criticize Gassner not as a Christian but as a ‘‘Freygeist,’’ a
Freethinker, who jokes about the gospel on almost every page.∏π For
the anonymous author of A Short List of Modern Highwaymen who
have dealt with the Gassner Phenomenon in Ellwangen, Schubart was
contemptible for his clownish manner, his ‘‘pickled herring’’ style
(‘‘Pickelheringsart’’), and for his transparent envy and malice. Charg-
ing that Schubart was among the many who visited Gassner in Ell-
wangen, this author protested that Schubart had not understood
134
the basis of Gassner’s treatments and had suspected that the pious
priest was only interested in making money, as he would have done.∏∫
Others objected to Schubart’s shameful behavior, calling him an epi-
curean, a Freydenker, and an ally of Voltaire. By aiming to increase
the ‘‘empire of Venus,’’ Schubart had shown himself worse than a
Protestant.∏Ω
The best example of how Catholic traditionalists felt about Schu-
bart’s breezy and irreligious ridicule can be found in a little-known
sixty-five-page comedy entitled Hans the Clown and Schubart (Hann-
swurst und Schubart).π≠ Anonymously written, probably by the ex-
Jesuit Cathedral preacher Johann Georg Zeiler from Augsburg,π∞ the
play, which is actually only a few pages long, came with a lengthy
preface and an afterword that cursed Schubart and laughed at him for
living in exile (as a self-proclaimed German Ovid in Ulm), miserably
composing lies and assailing the gods, raining insults and abuse on
everyone. Zeiler took special offense at the way Schubart had man-
gled and misinterpreted a previous work of his entitled Sympathy, a
Universal Means of Combating All Devilries,π≤ in which the author had
defended the distinction between natural and unnatural diseases. By
that very distinction, there were of course natural disorders, and
Schubart could hardly expect to hit his target if all he meant to
show was that natural disorders existed. Over and over, in both
works, Zeiler ridiculed and abused Schubart’s sloppy logic, his lack of
academic learning, his unchristian conclusions, and his extravagant
praise for Goethe’s immoral Sorrows of Young Werther.
Schubart’s laughter failed to persuade, but perhaps that had never
been his goal. Once he was jailed by the tyrannical Duke Karl Eugen,
Protestant and Enlightened voices sprang belatedly to his defense
(including Lavater, for example), but only a few of the Gassner con-
troversialists publicly lamented his disappearance. The most promi-
nent was surely Friedrich Nicolai, the remarkable publicist from
Berlin, the editor and publisher of the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek.π≥
From the beginning of this venture in the 1760s, Nicolai had set
himself the remarkable (and hopeless) task of reviewing every book
published in Germany. He never came close to this ambitious goal
135
with respect to most Catholic publishing, and he ignored most books

from the German South, but from the very start of Gassner’s exorcis-
ing career, Nicolai kept himself well informed through secret chan-
nels, using agents who sent him reports and packets of literature,
which Nicolai and his contributors summarized and criticized.π∂
In this effort, Nicolai also exemplified a modern approach to the
confusions generated by the Gassner affair. He tried to control or
contain the turbulent debates by creating bibliographies, and it is
striking how many other authors also appended shorter or longer
reading lists to their pamphlets and books, lists that allowed readers
to judge whether an author had ‘‘mastered’’ the ever-growing litera-
ture.π∑ With the help of such lists, the careful historian can set many
of the publications of 1775 and 1776 in a rough chronological order,
creating a sort of cultural epidemiology. But these bibliographies also
suggest a new approach to public controversy. We sometimes give
students the same task today, when we ask them to provide annotated
bibliographies or summaries of the literature on complex topics as a
substitute for resolving every point in an argument. Nicolai thus pro-
vides evidence here again of how Gassner’s struggle exemplified many
of the major issues of his day, including the problems generated by the
reading and writing frenzy of the 1770s. The annotated bibliogra-
phies provided by Nicolai suggest that the old-school efforts to com-
ment on every argument made by an opponent collapsed under the
weight of the flurry of publications from all angles and at all social
levels. Other readers also came to recognize that bibliography was by
no means a neutral task. Georg Wilhelm Zapf in Augsburg, for exam-
ple, published his own annotated bibliography of the Gassner craze,
in which he ostentatiously criticized Nicolai’s efforts.π∏
Bibliographical control of the burgeoning journal literature of
the late eighteenth century was so obviously necessary that in 1790
Johann Heinrich Beutler and Johann Christoph Guts-Muths pub-
lished a two-volume ‘‘General Subject Index Covering the Most Im-
portant German Newspapers and Weeklies,’’ and that was only the
beginning of German efforts to register and analyze the journalistic
frenzy that had broken out.ππ Of course, the Gassner affair appeared
136
in these lists, and ambitious intellectuals could use this bibliography

and the others that soon followed to familiarize themselves with a
controversy that was dying away by 1790. But like most self-declared
intellectuals, these lists too concentrated overwhelmingly on the
Protestant North. When listing the theological writings of the 1770s,
for example, Beutler and Guts-Muths publicized only one Catholic
journal and then noted disparagingly that its editor, a convert from
Lutheranism, was far too eager to display his ‘‘hatred against the party
of the church he left behind and his vengeful sensitivity over every
supposed insult, no matter how small.’’π∫ To be fair, they also noted
that an ‘‘anti-papist journal’’ intended for ‘‘the impartial Lutheran’’
was an immoderately partisan rag, ‘‘declaring war’’ on his ‘‘former
Catholic comrades in the faith.’’πΩ In this atmosphere Protestants had
trouble learning about the Catholic South, if they ever had any desire
to do so.
Even when North Germans dealt with Catholic Germany, how-
ever, there was little pretense of cool-minded objectivity. We need
not again detail Friedrich Nicolai’s full engagement with the Gassner
affair, but merely remind ourselves that in the mid to late 1770s the
exorcist confirmed all of his North German, Protestant, and Enlight-
ened prejudices about the superstitious, backward, Catholic South,
prejudices for which he became even more famous after his journey
of discovery into the heart of darkness in 1781, the tour of south-
ern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland that Nicolai memorialized at
length in the 1780s. Nicolai joined Schubart in publishing scath-
ing, scandalous, and satirical interpretations of the Catholic cultural
scene. His reports echo throughout with hilarity at what he described
as the ludicrous superstitions and nonsense of half-wits.
The Functions of Laughter
Contemptuous laughter was characteristic of the German Enlight-

enment at its coarsest and most raucous, and we can conclude this
chapter by asking what such laughter actually accomplished. At first
sight it might appear that Schubart, Nicolai, Sterzinger, Zeiler, Merz,
137
and the many other satirists and participants in the Gassner contro-
versy used their humor as a means of persuasion.∫≠ They seem at first
glance to be seeking converts to their causes among the general read-
ing public. But on reflection, one realizes that vengeful ridicule, harsh
words and invective, biting satire and personal insults could have had
little hope of winning over anyone at whom such bombards were
directed, or even anyone trying to form an independent view. In fact,
as we all know from personal experience, hurting someone’s feelings
is rarely a way of changing his or her mind. So these polemical mis-
siles, unlike the academic discourse of disputation and response, did
not actually aim to change anyone’s mind. Instead, their dangerous
humor aimed at solidifying the ranks of the already converted, or at
excluding or warning off those who might be tempted to take up the
wrong side in an argument. Indeed, as Anne Goldgar has pointed out,
the fear of ridicule was a powerful disincentive to joining in certain
kinds of discourse.∫∞ Laughter has often been understood as a trium-
phant expression of superiority or even of glorying dominance, but
here it would appear that laugher was more a means of strengthening
a party or a front when faced with opponents with whom one could
not simply argue. In this way, laughter can criticize or affirm the
status quo.
In a recent neo-classical account, F. H. Buckley has emphasized the
ways in which adult laughter seems always directed (at least implicitly)
at some butt, some target, over whom the jokester can feel justifiably
superior.∫≤ Buckley’s rather elaborate apology for laughter as a means
to the good life makes larger claims than can be plausibly sustained,
but he has usefully emphasized the role laughter and joking play in cre-
ating communities that feel superior to their often rigid, rule-bound,
humorless, machinelike, foolish, immoral, or self-indulgent targets.
Ever since Aristotle, the Western tradition has understood laughter as
a sudden recognition of glorious superiority, a sense of triumph that
classical rhetoricians tried to mobilize in order to make up for the
recognized inadequacies of sober and reasonable discourse.∫≥
Laughter firms up the boundaries of the acceptable, and may per-
suade some listeners or readers to move over to the laugher’s side, or
138
at least to get out of the way. Surely we all do what we can to avoid
becoming the target of the spiteful humorist, even if it means no more
than turning off the TV or leaving the party. This explains, I think,
why we joke best in the company of those with whom we agree. The
ill-advised or impolite joke is often only a joke told in the wrong
company, one that wounds or silences rather than firming up the
ranks of the humorful.∫∂ In this way, ridicule creates communities of
laughter.∫∑ But precisely for this reason, laughter splinters the public
sphere into competing groups of mutually contemptuous readers and
writers.
The culture of ridicule in the Gassner controversy, the raillery of
the Enlightened (including the Catholic Enlightened) and of the tra-
ditional (including both Protestant and Catholic traditionalists) could
not, therefore, contribute to the creation of one conversation, one
public sphere. It is true, to be sure, that the pamphlets of the 1770s
aimed for a wide readership, but they did not hesitate to offend and to
repel those readers who could not be expected to share the views of
the writer. Without addressing them as thoughtful persons, and by
generating laughter at their expense, I would suggest that these pam-
phlets did not actually increase conversation, dialogue, and thought-
ful dissent. Instead, it would appear that there were various kinds of
public formed during and by the Gassnerstreit. The combatants in this
controversy sometimes raised this very issue to consciousness and
discussed what sort of public they were addressing, what sort of public
they were creating.
Nicolai, for example, often appealed to the public as a proper judge
of the rank nonsense he exposed in the German South. But he too
acknowledged that genuine dialogue (respectful, reciprocal conversa-
tion) with Catholics was almost impossible. In a dispute with Chris-
tian Garve concerning the general character of Catholicism, Nicolai
admitted, ‘‘I know very well, that it is usually most difficult to arrive at
even a modest understanding with Catholics, who from childhood on
have known nothing but their religious prejudices. The more clearly
and more freely a Protestant expresses himself, the stranger much of
it seems to even the best Catholic.’’∫∏ With Joseph II’s 1781 decree of
139
religious toleration in Austria, Nicolai hoped that Protestants might

slowly work to erase centuries of prejudice. But ‘‘even in the most
Enlightened Catholic states, censorship was so strict that no one can
open his mouth about the many abuses.’’∫π So Protestants had to do
what Enlightened Catholics could not do for themselves. Others,
however, could appeal to ‘‘the public,’’ too, hoping that it would see
things differently, as we see in An Open Protest and Complaint Offered to
the Public against the Frankfurt Journalist, the Frankfurt journalist
being a writer who had published a sharp critique of Gassner.∫∫ An-
other author objected to the publicity that this Frankfurt journalist
had achieved and implicitly threatened a libel action against him. His
fury derived in part from the very publicity that newspapers and
journals afforded the most scandalous author.∫Ω The Ellwangen coun-
cillor Joseph Sartori complained, indeed, that various authors were
appealing to different publics, making their petitions highly confus-
ing.Ω≠ Confronting claims that Gassner’s cures were all either natural
or fraudulent and that a ‘‘wise public’’ could be expected to recognize
such frauds, Sartori objected that his opponent was asking ‘‘really
what do you the public think of this episode?’’ And he assumed that
the wise public’s answer would be: ‘‘Not much!’’ But, Sartori coun-
tered, this public was not his, for his opponent’s world was full of
irreligious skeptics. ‘‘And what do you call your ‘wise world’? I have
no real idea of your world. Is it perhaps a landscape populated by
madmen, or a well-policed society of moral egoists? Men who all
think like you? . . . I appeal to another public, who will give me
witnesses that there are people even among you who feel the effective
force of Herr Gassner’s healing power.’’Ω∞ Sartori sarcastically pro-
tested that in appealing to the public, one had to distinguish the
‘‘wise’’ from rational fools.
From confrontations like this one, we learn that creating an En-
lightened public sphere was not just a matter of carving out a realm
separate from the state and from purely private interests, a realm of
enlightened debate and discussion, where the rules of reason made it
possible to consider issues calmly without the pressure of material
interest or political intimidation. This amounts to yet another limi-
140
tation on Jürgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public

Sphere, that influential effort to understand and construct the emerg-
ing conditions for truly Enlightened and useful debate.Ω≤ The actual
rules of the conversational game, what Deborah Tannen has called the
conversational style, could determine whether the participants in a
controversy were able to listen to each other. Genuine attempts to lis-
ten, to hear what a vehement opponent was saying remained rare in
the 1770s.Ω≥ One reason, I think, is that the raucous laughter and ridi-
cule which each side enjoyed at the expense of the opposition made it
hard if not impossible to feel willing to converse with such brutes. The
Gassner controversy generated such polarized communities of laugh-
ter that each side remained unable to learn much from the other. This
does not make the Gassner controversy different from other con-
frontations between the philosophes and the counter-Enlightenment,
but it was a strikingly brilliant example of how easily debate could
degenerate into a satisfied conversation of the like-minded.
This remains a continuing problem for all of our public controver-
sies right down to today. We enjoy laughing at our political, religious,
or philosophical opponents, but our very laughter can poison any
genuine attempt to understand our differences. We hate it when our
opponents find ways to laugh at us. Buckley may be right that laugh-
ter and good humor are necessary parts of a good life, but we must
also keep our witty instincts under control or else run the risk of
confining ourselves to a circle of the self-proclaimedly superior. As
Cass Sunstein has recently pointed out, we need dissent and dissen-
ters to keep the mainstream from flowing toward undesirable ex-
tremes. But nonconformists and gadflies can perform their crucial
tasks only if ‘‘listeners are willing to give dissenters a respectful hear-
ing.’’Ω∂ In his criticism of Voltaire, Thomas Carlyle anticipated this
point when he remarked, ‘‘All great men have been careful to subordi-
nate this talent or habit of ridicule.’’Ω∑
In these five chapters, I have tried to show that a hitherto rather

unknown German controversy raised issues far more generally im-
portant that we might have thought at first glance. I think that
141
demonic possession actually ‘‘made sense’’ in the late eighteenth cen-

tury, and that the conceptual framework of demons provided a way of
understanding evil, sickness, and hardship in a structure which we
have mostly dismantled but for which we have not really found a
substitute. And those concepts made possible a series of religious
experiences open only to those who truly believed in demonic posses-
sion. I have also tried to show that efforts to describe Father Gassner’s
healing methods probably changed what he was doing; that the rise of
eyewitness protocols provided empirical evidence for the interven-
tion of spirits in this world, evidence that Protestant and naturalist
skeptics could only deny by denying the relevance of empirical evi-
dence altogether. Protestant commentators had another problem
with Gassner, of course, because the synoptic Gospels speak so fre-
quently, and so naturally (so ‘‘geschichtsähnlich’’), of demons and
their damage. If one wanted to get beyond Gassner and his demons, it
seemed necessary to develop a whole new style of exegesis in which
Scripture came to have a metaphorical, allegorical, or spiritual signifi-
cance that no longer depended upon a literal meaning. And in this
chapter, I have claimed that the Gassner controversy depended so
heavily upon anonymous contributions ridiculing and deriding their
supposedly stupid or immoral opponents that a real or sober conver-
sation about serious issues could not occur. Instead, an emerging
modern society, one might say an emerging modern discourse, was
split from the start into spheres that hardly intersected at all. The
emergence of ‘‘the public’’ splintered almost ab initio into various
mutually uncomprehending publics, a condition that will seem famil-
iar to us all.
142
EPILOGUE
In the end it was easy enough for an emperor and a pope to stop an
obedient priest from abusing or overextending his priestly powers of
exorcism. It was, however, an entirely different matter to eradicate or
even curtail the belief in evil spirits among a population where such
ideas were deeply rooted and seemed to explain so much. Even Prot-
estants discovered that the Gospels were resistant to Enlightened
demythologizing. It slowly dawned on some advanced thinkers that
just as Jesus had actually believed in an imminent apocalypse, a return
to this earth that some of those who heard him would live to see (Mt
16:28; cf. Mt 10:23; Mk 9:9; Lk 9:27; Rev 3:11), so too he probably
did believe that his healings had cast out demons. Efforts to interpret
his utterances as accommodations to the superstitions of the Jews, as
if he had merely ‘‘spoken the language’’ of the people among whom
he lived, served rather to separate him from the culture in which he
had grown up and to aggrandize the modern interpreter, who seemed
to claim a unique authority to decide which of his sayings he might
have meant.
When Friedrich Nicolai made his famous trip from Berlin through
the Catholic lands of southern Germany and Austria, he was aston-
ished to find that even in that self-proclaimedly Enlightened day,
Catholics still enthusiastically took part in pilgrimages and proces-
sions, venerated images and relics, donned scapulars dedicated to
various religious orders and saints, chastised their flesh with fasts and
even with flagellation, and pinned up images of their tutelary saints.
In one inn in Austria, Nicolai found a Latin exorcism posted in a
room invoking all the names of God and banishing demons, which he
transcribed as follows:
Ad cognoscendum si aliquis vexetur à Spiritibus immundis.
In Nomine Patris & Filii Spiritus † Sancti, Amen. Hel † Heloin † Sother
143
EPILOGUE
† Emmanuel † Sabaoth Agia † Tetragrammaton † Agyon † Otheos †

Ischyros † Athanatos † Jehova † Adanay † Saday † Homnosin † Mes-
sias † Exerchye † Increatus Pater † Increatus Filius † Increatus Spir-
itus † Sanctus.
JEsus [sic] Christus vincit † Christus regnat † Christus imperat † Si
Diabolus ligavit & tentavit te, N. suo effectu, per sua opera, Christus
Filius Dei vivi, per suam misericordiam liberet te ab omnibus spir-
itibus immundis, qui venit de coelo, & incarnatus in utero Beati-
ssimae Virginis Mariae, causa humanae salutis, & ejiciendi diabolum
& omnem malignum spiritum at te in profundum inferni abyssi.
Ecce Crucem Domini fugite partes adversae, vicit Leo de tribu Juda,
Radix David Alleluja Alleluja Alleluja.∞
To Nicolai’s Prussian and Protestant amazement, faithful Austrian

Catholics still wore little blessings (‘‘Conceptions-Zettlen’’) with
which they warded off evil spirits; even military men went into battle
with little prayers and blessings in their pockets, invoking Mary and
all the saints in heaven.≤ In 1784 Nicolai learned that Johanna Stein-
böckin, the thirty-three-year-old wife of a hatmaker from Grein, had
imbibed a devil (disguised as a ‘‘Grinaigl,’’ a green-eyed straw fly) in a
mug of beer. She was sure that she had been bewitched, and indeed a
priest had tried fruitlessly to exorcise the devil. The secular admin-
istrators of Upper Austria ordered her into a lazaretto, and doctors
declared her a fool. But her pastor was not so easily silenced.≥ And in
Munich, Nicolai learned that the ex-Jesuit Johann Nepomuk Gruber
had preached so vehemently in St. Michael’s against free thought,
that people claimed they could hear the devils roaring, a gross trick of
the ex-Jesuits that nonetheless made an impression on the ‘‘stupid
masses.’’∂
Echoes of Gassner could be heard in Tyrol, too. In the frescoes
painted by Johann Jacob Zeiller on the church of St. Nicholas in
Elbigenalp in 1776 one can make out the colorful depiction of an
exorcism. Surely that was no mere coincidence. And in May of 1783 a
teenage girl from the Alto Adige fell ill, experienced visions, and
began to behave as if possessed. She was brought to the Augustinian
monastery of Seefeld in the Tyrol, where an exorcist found that she
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was infested with one hundred million evil spirits; a satirical reporter
feigned amazement, claiming that he thought Gassner had banished
them all from the world. Here Gassner’s influence extended to the use
of probative exorcisms.∑ A few years later an exorcist from Seefeld
composed a rhyming spoof at the expense of skeptics in Württem-
berg, with a view to proving the existence of the devil.∏ Clearly in
Tyrol the devil had survived the death of Gassner.
At the University of Dillingen natural philosophy Professor Joseph
Weber found that there were still burning coals under the ashes of the
supposedly dying controversy over demons when he tried in 1787 to
finish off lingering beliefs in witchcraft and demons. He wrote, he
said, because to his dismay ordinary country people continued to fear
‘‘active witchcraft.’’π Just as amazing, perhaps, was the reaction of an
Augsburg Catholic tobacco merchant, Franz Joseph Schmid, who
immediately replied to Weber, blasting his ‘‘Witches’ Reformation’’
and accusing him of fostering deism or even atheism. Rehashing the
refutations of Semler and other Enlightenment interpreters of de-
mons, Schmid declared that the belief in demons and witchcraft was
an important pillar of Christian dogma and morals.∫ In other words,
even at the level of debate over demons and witchcraft, a certain level
of controversy continued to bubble beneath the notice of most self-
proclaimedly Enlightened writers. Some of Gassner’s followers even
became imitators and carried on his method of healing in the decades
after the priest from Klösterle had retired into obscurity.Ω Indeed, to
the dismay of the Enlightened, ‘‘superstitious’’ cures and religious
approaches to illness continued to characterize most parts of Ger-
many on into the nineteenth century.∞≠
It was not only the ‘‘masses,’’ therefore, who retained their beliefs
in demons and other spirits. Once the flood tide of the Enlighten-
ment began to ebb, religious and literary figures emerged who had
either never doubted or had now revived their conviction that reason
and empirical science were not sufficient tools with which to interpret
life in this world. Over thirty years ago Hans Grassl published a
dramatic and learned book in which he argued persuasively that the
Gassner controversy marked the beginning of the Bavarian Romantic
145
EPILOGUE
movement, the moment when the forces of tradition, religion, and

emotion began to mount a counteroffensive against the supposedly
sterile wastes of reason.∞∞ He emphasized the connections between
the ex-Jesuits, the Rosicrucians, the followers of Mesmer, and the
opponents of the Illuminati, along with Lavater, the mystical theoso-
phist Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling,
Karl von Eckartshausen, Johann Michael Sailer, Ferdinand Maria
Baader, and a host of others who worked for a revived Catholicism
and a new sort of magical or romantic natural philosophy.
Although Bavaria had held firm against Gassner himself, Gassner’s
followers and enthusiasts worked during the 1780s and 1790s to make
Bavaria a crucible for romantic philosophy and literature. In this
atmosphere, full-fledged Romantics such as Adam Carl August von
Eschenmeyer and Justinus Kerner rediscovered the career and writ-
ings of Gassner and celebrated his mastery of the ‘‘spiritual formative
powers’’ ( geistige Bildungskraft) that brought healing. For them Gass-
ner represented one of the first who had unmasked the Enlighten-
ment.∞≤ This was no longer a debate between Mesmer and Gassner,
but an attempt to spiritualize and unify their divergent energies. In
the 1820s or 1830s, the Swabian physician Justinus Kerner (1786–
1862) even studied the manuscript Protokolle of Gassner’s healings in
Sulzbach to gain insight into the origins of a romantic medicine,
seeing Gassner as the bearer of a divine power and an evangelical
truth. He saw his investigations as the empirical work of a physician,
carefully noting phenomena that seemed to require belief in spirits.∞≥
His treatment of a visionary ‘‘somnambulist,’’ Frederike Hauffe, per-
suaded him that she was truly in touch with spirits of the dead, and his
knowledge of Mesmer’s theories only strengthened his conviction
that certain afflictions were best understood as ‘‘demonic-magnetic’’
in nature.∞∂ He developed a ‘‘magical medicine’’ that explicitly de-
pended upon notions of healing by use of natural, magnetic sympathy
and contact with the world of spirits. So the fateful pairing of Gassner
and Mesmer lived on despite their own efforts in the 1770s to dis-
tinguish themselves from each other.∞∑
Among the Württemberg Protestant Pietists of the early-
146
EPILOGUE
nineteenth-century Awakening, moreover, the devil revived as a fig-

ure of psychological temptation and as a source of physical illness.
Pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880) was perhaps the
crucial figure, starting in 1842, in restoring the belief in demons and
in exorcism to a position of recognized and authorized practice, at
least among ordinary Pietists. Over the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury, numerous healers developed a ministry of healing and deliv-
erance that fed into twentieth-century Pentecostalism.∞∏ Blumhardt
himself learned over years of dealing with supposedly possessed pa-
tients ‘‘that everything that had hitherto been reckoned under the
most ridiculous popular superstition, stepped over from the world of
fairy tales into reality.’’∞π Although they may well have been aware of
the local impact of Gassner in southern Germany, the general Pietist
allergy to Catholic ‘‘superstition’’ insulated them from his direct in-
fluence even as they adopted many of his specific practices and beliefs.
To the north, in Berlin itself, the 1780s was a decade of increasing
spiritualist enthusiasm, stimulated in part by the accession of Freder-
ick William II to the throne of Prussia in 1786; the new ruler sup-
ported ministers and courtiers devoted to religiously conservative,
mystical, visionary, and anti-Enlightenment projects.∞∫ Ghosts and
other spiritual bodies were suddenly back on the cultural agenda, and
empirical evidence, at least, seemed to support their existence. Con-
troversies about the validity of visions even pulled in such luminaries
as Goethe and Kant and shaped the growing reaction to the Enlight-
enment well into the early nineteenth century.
Aside from the factual or medical status of healing by exorcism,
moreover, we need to remember that Gassner’s rituals were also in-
tended to bolster faith in Jesus. Even if a physical cure was unavailable
or only transient, patients might credibly claim to feel better be-
cause their conditions and perhaps their lives made better sense when
viewed through the lens of renewed and strengthened faith. It is in
this sense that Gassner’s campaign amounted to a religious revival.
The political forces mobilized during the Gassner scandal had a fu-
ture as well. As we have seen, the ex-Jesuits, especially in Augs-
burg, organized a remarkable propaganda campaign in favor of the
147
EPILOGUE
exorcist’s healings, and many of the same persons became active in the
harsh Bavarian reaction to the discovery of the obscurantist, anti-
clerical, and Enlightened Illuminati ‘‘conspiracy’’ in 1784, when the
Prince Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria cracked down on its mem-
bers, jailing many and forcing others to flee.∞Ω Years before the French
Revolution, conservative fears of a vast conspiracy to undermine both
church and state fueled a theory that threw ‘‘free thinkers, free spir-
its, freemasons, Encyclopedists, rationalists, Jansenists, and Jose-
phinians’’ into one pot.≤≠ In this way, reactions to the Gassner scandal
helped to forge the ideology and party formations that characterized
the post-Napoleonic Restoration in Germany.≤∞ Former Illuminati,
such as Count Maximilian von Montgelas, also managed to work their
way back into the Bavarian government, having given up almost all of
their former conspiratorial ideals but remaining true to at least the
Josephinian goal of state control of the church and the secularization
of ecclesiastical properties.≤≤
In these ways Gassner’s healing campaign and the controversy he
provoked pointed forward to political, religious, intellectual, and liter-
ary movements that erupted in the nineteenth century. His thoughts
on healing survived in secular form as Mesmerism and even later as
one of the remote origins of psychoanalysis. His emphasis upon teach-
ing patients to control their own symptoms has continued to inspire
modern hypnotherapists.≤≥ Whatever we ourselves may think of his
healing practices or of his ideas about demons, Gassner was not just a
figure of the pre-Enlightenment, a pious or superstitious relic of the
age of the baroque. We cannot easily disentangle him and what he
stood for from the many facets of the counter-Enlightenment that
have troubled and enlivened our modern world. Moreover, his con-
troversy, with its fierce publicity and contemptuous rhetoric, fore-
shadowed the splintered worlds of modernity and postmodernity in
which our commentators only rarely step outside the comfortable
assumptions of those with whom they can share a laugh in order
to learn what those who radically disagree with them might be laugh-
ing about.
148
NOTES
Introduction
1. [Ferdinand Sterzinger], Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Aus

authentischen Urkunden beleuchtet und durch Augenzeugen bewiesen (n.p.,
1775), pp. 25–26. For a completely different account of these proceed-
ings, see the sympathetic report in [ Joseph Edler von Sartori], Die auf-
gedeckten Sterzingerischen Lügen, Keckheit, und Unwissenheit, aus unwider-
stösslichen Wahrheiten beleuchtet (n.p., 1775).
2. The revived interest in religion in general and in the orthodox religious
origins of dissent in eighteenth-century Europe is clearly visible in James
E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley, Religion and Politics in Enlightenment
Europe (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). For a
spectacular example, see Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the
French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). For the tradition that began with
Robert R. Palmer’s Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), see now Darrin M. Mc-
Mahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment
and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
The speculations of John Kent are useful here: The Unacceptable Face: The
Modern Church in the Eyes of the Historian (London: SCM Press, 1987).
3. ‘‘Critiquing prejudice was one of the central goals of the Aufklärung, but
we can now see that it was not . . . a one-shot affair. It was a process, open-
ended and continuous, and it embraced not only those who identified
themselves with the Aufklärung but also its self-styled opponents.’’ Jef-
frey Freedman, A Poisoned Chalice (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2002), p. 138.
4. Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and
Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970); among
psychological studies, see also Beate Meissner, ‘‘Die Heilmethode des
Exorzisten Johann Joseph Gassner. Eine Urform der Psychotherapie?’’
unpublished Diplomarbeit, Freiburg, 1984; Adam Crabtree, From Mes-
mer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). The latest student in this line of
149
NOTES TO PAGES 7 – 8
research has reversed Ellenberger’s evaluation: Burkhard Peter, ‘‘Hypno-

tische Selbstkontrolle. Die wirksame Psychotherapie des Teufelsbanners
Johann Joseph Gassner um 1775,’’ Hypnose und Kognition 17 (Doppelheft
1–2) (2000), pp. 19–34.
5. In German Gassner has been studied for more than a century. See J. A.
Zimmermann, Johann Joseph Gassner, der berühmte Exorzist (Kempten,
1878); Georg Pfeilschifter, ‘‘Des Exorzisten Gassner Tätigkeit in der
Konstanzer Diözese im Jahre 1774,’’ Historisches Jahrbuch 52 (1932),
pp. 401–41; Hans Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik. Bayerns Beitrag zur
deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 1765–1785 (Munich: Beck, 1968), esp. pp.
131–71, 424–29; Wolfgang Behringer, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern. Volks-
magie, Glaubenseifer und Staatsräson in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Old-
enbourg, 1987), pp. 363, 394–97.
6. Nils Freytag, ‘‘Exorzismus und Wunderglaube im späten 18. Jahrhun-
dert. Reaktionen auf die Teufelsbanner und Wunderheiler Johann Joseph
Gassner und Adam Knoerzer,’’ in Edwin Dillmann, ed., Regionales Prisma
der Vergangenheit. Perspektiven der modernen Regionalgeschichte (19./20.
Jahrhundert) (St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1996) (=Saarland Bibliothek, Bd. 11),
pp. 89–105, 427–34. The best example of such a regional focus on Gas-
sner is Josef Hanauer’s lengthy monograph, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner und
Wunderheiler Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779),’’ Beiträge zur Ge-
schichte des Bistums Regensburg 19 (1985), pp. 303–545, an essentially un-
revised version of his dissertation, Würzburg 1950. See also Manfred
Tschaikner, ‘‘Von ‘bösen zauberischen Leuten’ in Braz um 1750. Aus
der Familiengeschichte des berühmten Exorzisten Johann Joseph Gass-
ner,’’ Bludenzer Geschichtsblätter 5 (1989), pp. 15–34; Gerhard Ammerer,
‘‘ ‘Gegen die unbefugten Unternehmungen gewisser Exorcisten’—Der
Hirtenbrief Erzbischof Colloredos gegen den Wunderheiler Johann
Joseph Gassner von 1776,’’ Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger
Landeskunde (2002), pp. 141–80; Siegfried Müller, Drei ‘‘Wunderheiler’’
aus dem Vorarlberger Oberland (Feldkirch: Schriftenreihe der Rheticus Ge-
sellschaft, no. 20, 1986).
7. Elena Brambilla, ‘‘La fine dell’esorcismo: Possessione, santità, isteria
dall’età Barocca all’ Illuminismo,’’ Quaderni Storici 112 (2003), pp. 117–
63.
8. The literature on this huge topic has exploded in recent decades. See the
agenda-setting summary by Anthony La Vopa, ‘‘Conceiving a Public:
Ideas and Society in Eighteenth Century Europe,’’ Journal of Modern
150
History 64 (1992), pp. 79–116; for a succinct survey of the whole field, see
James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For a useful consider-
ation of publicity and the problem of the ‘‘Germanies,’’ see Benjamin W.
Redekop, Enlightenment and Community: Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the
Quest for a German Public (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens Uni-
versity Press, 2000).
9. Behringer Hexenverfolgung in Bayern, p. 357; Eduard Kohl, Maria Renata
Singer von Mossau. Die Geschichte einer Zeller Ordensschwester, die als letzte
fränkische Hexe verbrannt wurde (Zell am Main, 1999).
10. See, for example, Wolfgang Wüst, ‘‘Inquisitionsprozess und Hexenver-
folgung im Hochstift Augsburg im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift
für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 50 (1987), pp. 109–26.
11. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the
Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
Chapter 1. The Experience of Demons
1. Wolfgang Behringer, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern. Volksmagie, Glaubenseifer,

und Staatsräson in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1987), p. 364; Wolfgang
Jahn, Josef Kirmeier, Wolfgang Petz, and Evamaria Brockhoff, eds.,
‘‘Bürgerfleiss und Fürstenglanz’’: Reichsstadt und Fürstabtei Kempten. Katalog
zur Ausstellung. . . (Augsburg: Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, 1998),
pp. 225–27.
2. Gassner to Johann Christian Lentsch, 12 December 1772, Archiv der
Diözese Feldkirch (ADF), Klösterle G: 1.2.3.e. I must express my deep
gratitude to Dr. Elmar Schallert of the ADF for his hospitality and help
with these materials.
3. Experience has become a major category of historical analysis. Philipp
Sarasin, ‘‘Mapping the Body. Körpergeschichte zwischen Konstruktivis-
mus, Politik und ‘Erfahrung,’ ’’ in Historische Anthropologie 7 (1999),
pp. 437–51; Joan Scott, ‘‘The Evidence of Experience,’’ in James Chan-
dler, Arnold Davidson, and Harry Harootunian, eds., Questions of Evi-
dence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 363–87; Martin Beutelspacher,
Kultivierung bei lebendigem Leib. Alltägliche Körpererfahrungen in der Auf-
klärung (Weingarten, 1986); Michelle Z. Rosaldo, ‘‘Toward an Anthro-
pology of Self and Feeling,’’ in Richard Shweder and Robert LeVine,
151
eds., Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1984), pp. 137–57; Richard A. Shweder, Think-
ing through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1991); Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Mar-
garet M. Lock, ‘‘The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in
Medical Anthropology,’’ Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1 (1987), pp. 6–
41; Margaret Lock, ‘‘Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemol-
ogies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge,’’ Annual Review of Anthropology
22 (1993), pp. 133–55; Paul Münch, ed., ‘‘ ‘Erfahrung’ als Kategorie der
Frühneuzeitgeschichte,’’ Beiheft no. 31 to the Historische Zeitschrift (Mu-
nich, 2001).
4. When Gassner did heal those suffering from convulsions, he did not
claim that they were somehow especially demon possessed. Like almost
all the others, they had diseases that looked natural. Of the 130 persons
reported as cured in his diary for 1773, only six were labeled ‘‘male-
faciato’’ (bewitched). He did not record why he thought they were so.
5. Actually, Gassner was authorized only to visit the countess of Waldburg-
Zeill, but once he was there, he managed to prolong his healing tour.
6. We note that if we reckon his period of healing as three solid months
during the summer of 1774, his claim that he treated over eight thousand
persons would work out to almost ninety a day. This is so improbable that
there must be some exaggeration, or else Gassner was counting his use of
general blessings pronounced over whole groups of people.
7. Enthusiastic accounts put the total number at two hundred thousand, but
there is no reason to think that anyone was counting. See the ‘‘Instruction
sur les operations du Père Gassner’’ in the Hohenlohe Zentralarchiv
Neuenstein, Bestand Gassner.
8. Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philoso-
phy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 3, 240–50.
9. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, pp. 39–47. Robert Muchembled makes
a similar observation when he notes that the devil did not exactly disap-
pear in the eighteenth century. Instead he moved to become an ‘‘inner
demon,’’ continuing to haunt the Western imagination in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries; A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the
Present, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2003), pp. 167–96.
10. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, pp. 236–37: ‘‘In demystifying natural
and metaphysical evils, Rousseau also decriminalized them. But the more
psychology strove to become a science of nature, the more the distinction
between moral and natural evils broke down. The problem was dissolved
152
but raised in different form: can we trust a world where human nature is
subject to such despicable tendencies? The very naturalism that was the
pride of those who sought to disenchant the world undermines hard
distinctions they sought to establish. The more human beings become
part of the natural world, the more we, like earthquakes, become one
more unfortunate fact about it. The more evil itself seems explicable in
terms of natural processes, the more nature itself is implicated. . . . Sci-
ence may have abolished the sense that the world is inhabited by forces
with wills of their own, and in this way reduced the unheimlich. But the
price is enormous, for all nature stands condemned. Human beings them-
selves become walking indictments of creation.’’
11. Franz Anton Mesmer, Observations sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
(1779); Ernst Benz, Franz Anton Mesmer und die philosophischen Grund-
lagen des ‘‘animalischen Magnetismus’’ (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1977); Wil-
liam Hine, ‘‘Athanasius Kircher and Magnetism,’’ in John Fletcher, ed.,
Athanasius Kircher und seine Beziehungen zum gelehrten Europa seiner Zeit
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), pp. 79–99; Rudolf Tischner, Franz
Anton Mesmer (Munich, 1928), p. 71; Wolfgang Kupsch, ‘‘Bemerkungen
zur wissenschaftshistorischen Einordnung F. A. Mesmers,’’ in Heinz
Schott, ed., Franz Anton Mesmer und die Geschichte des Mesmerismus (Wies-
baden: Steiner, 1985), pp. 44–50; Margarethe Hansmann, ‘‘Mesmer in
Wien,’’ in Schott, ed., Mesmer und die Geschichte des Mesmerismus, pp. 51–
67; Frank A. Pattie, Mesmer and Animal Magnetism: A Chapter in the
History of Medicine (Hamilton, N.Y.: Edmonston, 1994), pp. 13–25, 48–
52; Adam Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of
Psychological Healing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
12. Hansmann, ‘‘Mesmer in Wien,’’ p. 58; Pattie, Mesmer and Animal Magne-
tism, pp. 55–56. Osterwald reported dramatic improvement in walking,
vision, as well as relief of a hernia and hemorrhoids. But see Hans Fieger,
P. Don Ferdinand Sterzinger. Lektor der Theatiner in München, Direktor der
historischen Klasse der kurbayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bekämp-
fer des Aberglaubens und Hexenwahns und der Pfarrer Gassnerischen Wun-
derkuren. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufklärung in Bayern unter Kurfürst
Maximilian III. Joseph (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1907), pp. 222–23, for Os-
terwald’s conclusion that Mesmer’s cures ‘‘had not the slightest effect on
me.’’ Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History
and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp.
56–57; Andreas Kraus, Die naturwissenschaftliche Forschung an der Bay-
erischen Akademie der Wissenschaften im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Munich:
153
Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978); Max Spin-

dler and Andreas Kraus, eds., Handbuch der Bayerischen Geschichte, vol. 2:
Das alte Bayern, 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1988), p. 1155.
13. Robert Darnton traces this part of Mesmer’s career and the course of the
sociopolitical movement he stimulated in Mesmerism and the End of the
Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1968).
14. This is a point that modern scholars often obscure, claiming that for
Gassner almost all disorders and diseases came from the devil. See, for
example, Behringer, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern, p. 394.
15. R. Home, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in R. Home and P. Connor, eds., Aepinus’s
Essay on the Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1979), pp. 1–224; Luigi Galvani, Commentary on the Effect of
Electricity on Muscular Motion: A Translation of Luigi Galvani’s ‘‘De viribus
electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius,’’ trans. Robert Montraville
Green (Cambridge, Mass.: E. Licht, 1953); George Adams, An Essay on
Electricity . . . With an Essay on Magnetism, 2d ed. (London: Tycho-Brahe’s
Head, 1785); Walter Bernardi, I fluidi della vita: alle origini della controver-
sia sull’ eletricità animale (Florence: Olschki, 1992); Johann August Donn-
dorff, Versuch eines Beweises wider die Existenz der anziehenden Kraft. Nebst
einer Erklärung von der wahrscheinlichen Ursach der Wirkung des Magneten
auf das Eisen, oder einen andern Magneten; Von der Beschaffenheit der Elec-
tricität, vorzüglich in Ansehung des Anziehens electrischer Körper; Und dem
leeren Raume. Mit einer Vorrede von Herrn Doctor Ziegler (Quedlinburg:
Christoph August Reussner, 1777). Patricia Fara, ‘‘An Attractive Ther-
apy: Animal Magnetism in Eighteenth-Century England,’’ History of Sci-
ence 33 (1995), pp. 127–77, at pp. 133–34.
16. Patricia Fara, An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
17. Alan Gauld, A History of Hypnotism (Cambridge, U.K.,: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1992), pp. 25–38. For the reports see Rapport des commissaires
chargés par le Roi, de l’examen du magnétisme animal, imprimé par ordre du
Roi. Sur la Copie imprimée au Louvre, à Paris chez Moutard, 1784. A second
commission, comprising members of the Royal Society of Medicine, con-
ducted its own tests and submitted its own report: Rapport des commissaires
de la Société Royale de Médecine, nommé par le Roi, pour faire l’examen du
magnétisme animal, Imprimé par ordre du roi. Sur la copie imprimée au Louvre,
à Paris, chez Moutard, 1784. It is summarized in Pattie, Mesmer, pp. 156–
58. A minority report was also submitted by A. L. de Jussieu, Rapport de
154
l’un des commissaires chargés par le Roi, de l’examen du magnetisme animal, à

Paris, chez la Vve. Hérissant et Théophile Barrois, 1784. See also C.
Burdin and F. Dubois, Histoire académique du magnétisme animal (Paris,
1841); M. M. Tinterow, ed., Foundations of Hypnosis: From Mesmer to Freud
(Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1970), who reprints the 1785 translation
into English entitled Report by Dr. Franklin, and Other Commissioners.
Denis I. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein provide intelligent commen-
tary in ‘‘Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
(1743–1794),’’ Annals of Science 11 (1955), pp. 103–28, 271–308.
18. J. C. Colquhoun, Report on the Experiments on Animal Magnetism, Made by
a Committee of the Medical Section of the French Royal Academy of Sciences;
Read at the Meeting of the 21st and 28th of June 1831 (Edinburgh: Robert
Cadell, 1833). This report, however, also affirmed that animal magnetism
allowed one to foresee the future, to achieve clairvoyance, to increase
one’s strength suddenly, and to ‘‘see’’ with one’s eyes closed; pp. 154–58,
162, 164–65, 166–69, 171, 198–99. Colquhoun’s introduction makes ex-
plicit comparisons with the case of Gassner, claiming that the facts of
Gassner’s cures ‘‘never were denied, nor attempted to be refuted,’’ but
that later some who had not witnessed his cures and could not explain
them ‘‘found it convenient, as usual, to throw discredit upon the whole
procedure, and ascribe it wholly to quackery and imposture’’ (pp. 45–46).
19. The first edition was Kempten, 1774, published while Gassner was on
his first South German tour. I have used the edition published ‘‘Mit
Erlaubnyss geistlicher Obrigkeit’’ in Augsburg and Ingolstadt in 1775
(but it is unclear what authority, if any, actually approved it; the prince
abbot of Kempten?). Twelve editions appeared by 1782. Joseph Hanauer,
‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 306–13. In 1775 alone a total of sixty works
appeared for and against Gassner.
20. Jeffrey Freedman provides a useful reaction to the same situation in A
Poisoned Chalice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 34–37,
143–44; cf. Hans Erich Bödeker, ‘‘Prozesse und Strukturen politischer
Bewusstseinsbildung der deutschen Aufklärung,’’ in Hans Erich Bödeker
and Ulrich Hermann, eds., Aufklärung als Politisierung, Politisierung als
Aufklärung (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1987), pp. 10–31; and Bödeker,
‘‘Journals and Public Opinion: The Politicization of the German En-
lightenment in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,’’ in Eckhart
Hellmuth, ed., The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Ger-
many in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990), pp. 423–45.
155
21. Horst Weigelt has emphasized the impact of the death of Felix Hess upon
the sensitive Lavater, who tried various semimagical, semireligious ways
of recalling Hess to life. From 1768 onward, Lavater seemed driven to
seek out wonders in the belief that ‘‘all things are possible to those who
believe.’’ He eagerly solicited accounts of modern miracles and tried to
test the powers of prayer. Horst Weigelt, Johann Kaspar Lavater. Leben,
Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1991), pp.
15–19.
22. Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution
in France and England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975),
p. 20.
23. Philip T. Weller, trans., The Roman Ritual in Latin and English with Rubrics
and Planechant Notation (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1952), vol. 2, pp.
172–73, paragraph 20. See Muchembled, History of the Devil, pp. 1, 188–
90, 230–31; and the critical remarks of Henry Ansgar Kelly in ‘‘Teufel,
V,’’ Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 33 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), pp.
124–34, esp. 131.
24. Oswald Loschert, the Premonstratensian abbot of Oberzell and vehe-
ment defender of Gassner, wrote repeatedly of the need to distinguish
witchcraft from possession. In his view, the devil could easily possess his
victims without any human collaboration, without any maleficium. See,
for example, [Oswald Loschert], Zweytes Sendschreiben eines Gottesgelehrten
am Tauberflusse an seinen Freund einen Weltweisen nächst dem Donaustrom;
Worinn der erstere in seinen Antworten auf verschiedene an ihn gestellte Fra-
gen, über das zeitherige Betragen des hochwürdigen Herrn Pfarrers Gassner,
bey Entdeckung und Austreibung der Geistern der Finsterniss, von den geplag-
ten Körpern der bey ihm hülfsuchenden Bedrangten, seine aufrichtige, den
Grundsätzen des Christenthums und einer ächten Gottesgelahrtheit ange-
messene Meynung eröfnet (n.p., 1775), pp. 15–28.
25. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern
Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
26. See the remarks of Edward Muir, ‘‘Observing Trifles,’’ in Edward Muir
and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe (Bal-
timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. vii–xxviii; Gerald
Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the Ger-
man Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978);
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-
Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1980); Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf:
156
Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, trans. H. C. Erik Midel-
fort (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998). For popular de-
monology in Germany, see H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in
Sixteenth-Century Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999),
pp. 49–78.
27. Wolfgang Behringer, Hexen. Glaube, Verfolgung, Vermarktung (Munich:
Beck, 1998), pp. 12–16, 70–74.
28. P. Alois Merz, Johann Joseph Gassners, Pfarrers zu Clösterl, Antwort auf
die Anmerkungen, welche in dem Münchnerischen Intelligenzblatt vom 12.
Nov. wider seine Gründe und Weise zu exorcieren, wie auch von der deutschen
Chronik und anderen Zeitungsschreibern gemacht worden. Mit gnädiger Er-
laubniss des hochwürdig-augsburgischen Ordinariats (Augsburg, 1774), p. 18;
elsewhere Muratori’s witticism was quoted slightly differently: Germans
sometimes quoted him thus: ‘‘nur jene Länder mit Teufeleyen angefüllet,
in welchen, und so lang sich ein berühmter Exorcist aufhält.’’ Joseph
Edler von Sartori, Politische Gedanken über die nötige Untersuchung Gass-
ners, und der Patienten (Augsburg: Joh. Franz Xaver. Crätz, 1776), p. 32.
29. Hildegard Mahler, Das Geistesleben Augsburgs im 18. Jahrhundert im Spie-
gel der Augsburger Zeitschriften (Ph.D. dissertation, Munich, 1934; pub-
lished Augsburg: Haas and Grabherr, 1934).
30. D. P. Walker, ‘‘The Cessation of Miracles,’’ in Ingrid Merkel and Allen G.
Debus, eds., Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the
Occult in Early Modern Europe (Washington, D.C., Folger Shakespeare
Library, 1988), pp. 111–24; David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of
Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1990); R. M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles:
From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell Univer-
sity Press, 1981); for Calvin see the extended treatment of John Mark
Ruthven, ‘‘On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic
of Benjamin B. Warfield’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University,
1989), pp. 21–62.
31. See the brilliant discussion of these matters in Lorraine Daston and Kath-
erine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone
Books, 1998). See also William Clark, ‘‘The Death of Metaphysics in
Enlightened Prussia,’’ in William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon
Schaffer, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 423–73.
32. Quoted in Robert Bruce Mullin, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagi-
nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 12, quoting Thomas
157
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, pt. 1, ques. 110, art. 4. Jean Céard, La nature
et les prodiges: L’insolite au XVIe siècle, en France (Geneva: Droz, 1977).
33. My analysis here has been stimulated by Jens Ivo Engels, ‘‘Wunder im
Dienste profanisierter Weltansicht? Zur Gemengelage der Weltbilder im
achtzehnden Jahrhundert anhand der Debatte über jansenistische Wun-
der,’’ Historisches Jahrbuch 117 (1997), pp. 84–110.
Chapter 2. A Niche in the Incubator
1. James A. Vann and Steven W. Rowan, The Old Reich: Essays on German
Political Institutions, 1495–1806 (Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie En-
cyclopédique, 1974); James Allen Vann, The Swabian Kreis: Institutional
Growth in the Holy Roman Empire, 1648–1715 (Brussels: Éditions de la
Librairie Encyclopédique, 1975); Mack Walker, Johann Jakob Moser and
the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1981); Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin, Das Alte
Reich, 1648–1806, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993–2000); Heinz
Duchhardt, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, 1495–1806 (Stuttgart: Kohl-
hammer, 1991); Georg Schmidt, Geschichte des alten Reiches. Staat und
Nation in der Frühen Neuzeit, 1495–1806 (Munich: Beck, 1999); Peter H.
Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495–1806 (New York: St. Martin’s,
1999); Matthias Schnettger, ed., Imperium Romanum, irregulare corpus,
Teutscher Reichs-Staat: das Alte Reich im Verständnis der Zeitgenossen und der
Historiographie (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2002).
2. Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate,
1648–1871 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971).
3. See Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin, ‘‘Die Reichskirche und die Säkulari-
sation,’’ in Rolf Decot, ed., Säkularisation der Reichskirche 1803. Aspekte
kirchlichen Umbruchs (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2002), pp. 13–
32, for a clear and vehement statement: ‘‘Die Säkularisation war die
grösste Katastrophe, die den deutschen Katholizismus je getroffen hat’’
(p. 30); Peter Hersche, ‘‘Intendierte Rückständigkeit: Zur Charakteristik
des geistlichen Staates im alten Reich,’’ in Georg Schmidt, ed., Stände und
Gesellschaft im alten Reich (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1989), pp. 133–49.
4. A brisk summary is available in Fritz Hartung, Deutsche Verfassungsge-
schichte vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, 6th ed. (Stuttgart: K. F.
Koehler, 1950), pp. 150–55.
5. A comparison with eighteenth-century Spain is illuminating. Although
no one doubts the extraordinary wealth of the Spanish church, most of its
158
lands were held as an institution (beneficial ecclesiastic) rather than by the

clergy personally ( patrimonial ecclesiastic). The Church held about 19 per-
cent of all cultivated lands in Castile and Aragon, but the bulk of these
lands were ‘‘beneficial’’ rather than ‘‘patrimonial.’’ Nothing corresponded
to the wealth and splendor of princely German prelates. Maximiliano
Barrio Gozalo, ‘‘The Landed Property of the Spanish Church During the
Ancien Regime,’’ Journal of European Economic History 31 (2002), pp. 245–
72, esp. 254–60.
6. Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1966), p. 276; John G. Gagliardo, Reich and Nation: The
Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1980), pp. 196–205.
7. Erwin Gatz and Stephan M. Janker, Die Bischöfe des Heiligen Römischen
Reiches 1648 bis 1803. Ein biographisches Lexikon (Berlin: Duncker and
Humblot, 1990), p. 618. The late medieval empire had also had a number
of North German archiepiscopal provinces (Bremen and Magdeburg)
and episcopal dioceses (Hamburg, Verden, Lübeck, Schwerin, Kam-
min, Lebus, Havelburg, Brandenburg, Halberstadt, Minden, Merseburg,
Naumburg, and Meissen) that had been secularized and had disappeared
during the Reformation. The few remaining small Catholic enclaves were
under the jurisdiction of the Catholic ‘‘Apostolic Vicariate of the North.’’
Many other West German bishops had survived but had lost major por-
tions of their territories or of their dioceses to Protestant states.
8. Hans-Jürgen Schulz, Kloster und Staat. Besitz und Einfluss der Reichsabtei
Salem. Ausstellung zum 850. Jubiläum (Tettnang: Markgräflich Badische
Museen, Salem, 1984), pp. 15–18; Reinhard Schneider et al., Salem. 850
Jahre Reichsabtei und Schloss (Constance: Friedrich Stadler, 1984), pp. 37–
41, 124–39; Alberich Siwek, Die Zisterzienserabtei Salem. Der Orden, das
Kloster, seine Äbte (Sigmaringen: Thorbeke, 1984), pp. 300–304.
9. Siwek, Salem, pp. 300–302.
10. Konstantin Maier illuminates both the politics and the canon legal dis-
cussion surrounding the exempt imperial abbeys of southwestern Ger-
many in Die Diskussion um Kirche und Reform im schwäbischen Reichsprä-
latenkollegium zur Zeit der Aufklärung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1978).
For enlightened writers, the attack on exempt abbeys could be extended
so that the problem was no longer just that imperial prelates claimed
immunity from their bishops but that the church claimed immunity from
secular authority even in secular matters. A particular point of friction
here was Peter von Osterwald’s Veremund von Lochsteins Gründe sowohl für
159
als wider die geistliche Immunität in zeitlichen Dingen (Strasbourg: n.p.,

1766); Osterwald was, we recall, the opponent of Gassner whom Mesmer
successfully treated. A few Swabian monks actually agreed with Enlight-
ened criticism, among them Ulrich Mayr, Cistercian of Kaisersheim,
Jakob Danzer, Benedictine of Isny, and Benedikt Maria Werkmeister,
Benedictine of Neresheim. Maier, Die Diskussion, pp. 58–61, 69–73, 95–
102, 123.
11. Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin, Das Reich (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986),
pp. 414–18.
12. Heribert Raab, ‘‘Die ‘katholische Ideenrevolution’ des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Der Einbruch der Geschichte in die Kanonistik und die Auswirkungen in
Kirche und Reich bis zum Emser Kongress,’’ in Harm Klueting, Norbert
Hinske, and Karl Hengst, eds., Katholische Aufklärung—Aufklärung im
katholischen Deutschland (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1993), pp. 104–18. The
phrase ‘‘Catholic revolution of ideas’’ was first used in a canon-legal work
by Ludwig Timotheus Spittler published in 1787.
13. Heribert Raab, Die Concordata Nationis Germanicae in der kanonistischen
Diskussion des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der epi-
skopalistischen Theorie in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1956), pp. 79,
125; Volker Pitzer, Justinus Febronius. Das Ringen eines katholischen Ireni-
kers um die Einheit der Kirche im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck and Ruprecht, 1976). A prominent forerunner and teacher of
the later generation was Zeger Bernard van Espen of the University of
Louvain (1648–1728), who argued for the autonomy of local ecclesiasti-
cal provinces. See Gustave Leclerc, Zeger Bernard van Espen (1648–1728)
et l’autorité écclésiastique. Contribution à l’histoire des théories gallicanes et du
jansénisme (Zurich: Pas Verlag, 1964).
14. Aretin, ‘‘Die Reichskirche und die Säkularisation,’’ pp. 23–25; Karl Ot-
mar Freiherr von Aretin, Das Alte Reich, 1648–1806, vol. 3: Das Reich
und der österreichisch-preussische Dualismus, 1745–1806 (Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta, 1997), pp. 237–57; Pitzer, Justinus Febronius; Peter Hersche, Der
Spätjansenismus in Österreich (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Aka-
demie der Wissenschaften, 1977), pp. 371–73.
15. Elisabeth Kovács, Der Pabst in Teutschland. Die Reise Pius VI. im Jahre 1782
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1983), pp. 42–43, 48, 105–6, 115, 153–56.
16. Aretin, Das Alte Reich, 1648–1806, vol. 3, pp. 257–74. By far the best
account of the high politics of the Swabian imperial prelates is Konstantin
Maier, Die Diskussion um Kirche und Reform im schwäbischen Reichsprälaten-
kollegium zur Zeit der Aufklärung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1978).
160
17. Derek Beales, Joseph II, vol. 1: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741–1780
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 441–79, esp. 452–55.
18. The best general introduction to the massive literature is Harm Klueting,
‘‘ ‘Der Genius der Zeit hat sie unbrauchbar gemacht.’ Zum Thema Katho-
lische Aufklärung—Oder: Aufklärung und Katholizismus im Deutschland
des 18. Jahrhunderts. Eine Einleitung,’’ in Harm Klueting, ed., Katho-
lische Aufklärung—Aufklärung im katholischen Deutschland (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1993), pp. 1–35.
19. Marc Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity
in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), pp. 206–7, 218–19; Eva Kimminich, Religiöse Volksbräuche
im Räderwerk der Obrigkeiten. Ein Beitrag zur Auswirkung aufklärischer
Reformprogramme am Oberrhein und in Vorarlberg (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
1989); Leonard Swidler, Aufklärung Catholicism 1780–1850: Liturgical
and Other Reforms in the Catholic Aufklärung (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars
Press, 1978).
20. Forster, Catholic Revival, pp. 220–39.
21. Sterzinger’s account is available in ‘‘Nachricht von Johann Joseph Gass-
ners Teufelsbeschwörungen und den dadurch veranlassten Bewegungen,
mit Beilegen,’’ in Christian Wilhelm Franz Walch, Neueste Religionsge-
schichte, 6 Theil (Lemgo, in der Mayerschen Buchhandlung, 1777)—
section 7 (pp. 369–438; with Beylagen 439–86); section 9 = ‘‘Beytrag zu
der Nachricht von den gassnerischen Teufelsbeschwörungen,’’ pp. 539–
48, here at p. 442. See also Hans Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand Sterzinger.
Lektor der Theatiner in München, Direktor der historischen Klasse der kur-
bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bekämpfer des Aberglaubens und
Hexenwahns und der Pfarrer Gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Aufklärung in Bayern unter Kurfürst Maximilian III. Joseph
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1907), pp. 178–79. The semiofficial Churbairische
Intelligenzblätter (published in Munich) criticized Gassner as early as
12 November 1774 and called attention to Gassner’s dependence upon
Ubald Stoiber’s Armamentarium Ecclesiasticum, in which Stoiber outlined
three kinds of possession, including the state of ‘‘circumsession,’’ a notion
that had been condemned in Rome.
22. Sterzinger in Walch, Neueste Religionsgeschichte, 6 Theil, p. 446. For the
exempt status of certain town properties of the prince provost of Ell-
wangen, see Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 475–76. Most of the town
and its surrounding villages were subject to the jurisdiction of the bishops
of Augsburg and Würzburg.
161
23. As bishop of Freising, Klemens Wenzeslaus had applauded the attack by

Ferdinand Sterzinger on witchcraft beliefs in 1766, and when he took
over the bishopric of Augsburg it appears that he continued to consider
fear of the devil a superstition to be uprooted. He abruptly refused ap-
peals from Gassner to be allowed into Augsburg territory. Hanauer, ‘‘Der
Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 476–77.
24. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 479–80.
25. Churbairische Intelligenzblätter, 1 April 1775, p. 53. On Wolter, see An-
dreas Kraus, Die naturwissenschaftliche Forschung an der Bayerischen Akade-
mie der Wissenschaften im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Bayerische Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Abhandlungen,
Neue Folge, Heft 82) (Munich: Verlag der Bay. Akad. d.Wiss., 1978), pp.
41–43. On Leuthner, see Clemens Alois Baader, Lexikon verstorbener
Baierischer Schriftsteller des achtzehenten und neunzehenten Jahrhunderts
(Des Zweyten Bandes Erster Theil A-P: Augsburg and Leipzig, Jenisch
und Stage, 1825), pp. 164–65.
26. Benedikt Stattler, prochancellor of the university of Ingolstadt and pro-
fessor of theology, published his observations in a long Latin report,
excerpts of which were quickly published in German in Was soll man
an den Kuren des Herrn geistlichen Rats Gassner die er bisher im Namen
Jesu gemacht hat, noch untersuchen, so nicht schon längst hundertmal ist
untersucht worden? (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1775), pp. 89–92; cf. Hanauer,
‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 438–39; Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand Sterzinger,
pp. 203–8. Stattler later published vehemently anti-Kantian philosophi-
cal works.
30. Antonius de Haen, De Miraculis Liber (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Esslinger,
1776); chapter 5 is dedicated to the cures of Gassner, pp. 142–208.
Gerhard van Swieten (1700–1772) had been an avid supporter of the
Jansenist archbishop of Utrecht and was therefore unable to obtain a
higher position in the Netherlands. When he moved to Vienna as the
personal physician of the empress Maria Theresa in 1745, he became the
center of a Jansenist Reform Catholic group at the Habsburg court that
included Ignaz Müller, the personal confessor to Maria Theresa, and Dr.
Anton de Haen. After the death of van Swieten, de Haen became the
strongest voice for Jansenist reform at the Habsburg court.
31. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 444.
162
32. This decree had its origins in a scandalous case of a possessed soldier, who
had suffered Ängste and convulsions for the previous six years. A certain
Father Eusebius OFM, claiming the permission of his ordinary, had con-
ducted exorcisms that lasted a whole day (and would have gone on the
next day as well), and crowds of curious onlookers had gathered. Maria
Theresa had intervened and ordered, in her own handwritten note, that
such cases be separated and sent directly to Dr. De Haen in the Bür-
gerspital for evaluation. Father Eusebius was not to be allowed to treat
such cases anymore. In further negotiations, Maria Theresa ordered that
the archbishop of Vienna should positively forbid exorcisms unless the
‘‘Politicum’’ (i.e., the Habsburg state) should express its approval, ‘‘be-
cause of the many deceits and abuses’’ of the ritual. Cölestin Wolfsgruber,
Christoph Anton Kardinal Migazzi, Fürsterzbischof von Wien. Eine Mono-
graphie und zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geshichte des Josephinismus, 2nd ed.
(Ravensburg: Hermann Kitz, 1897), pp. 201–2. See Walch, Beytrag zu der
Nachricht von den gassnerischen Teufelsbeschwörungen, in his Neueste Reli-
gionsgeschichte, sechster Theil (Lemgo, 1777), p. 546.
33. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 444, citing Walch, Neueste Religionsge-
schichte, 6 Theil (1777), p. 477, Beilage VII.
34. Wolfsgruber, Migazzi, pp. 203–4. The news of Gassner’s dismissal had
also been published in the December 8 issue of the Freytägige Münchner-
Zeitung. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 444.
35. Hanauer speculates (p. 445, n. 65) that Bishop Fugger probably included
the following bishops in his camp: Johann Baptist Anton von Federspiel,
bishop of Chur; the new bishop of Constance, Maximilian Christoph von
Rodt (the brother of the skeptical Franz Konrad von Rodt, who had died
15 October 1775); the suffragan bishop of Constance, Johann Nepomuk
Augustin von Hornstein; and Count Ludwig Joseph von Welden, bishop
of Freising. We do not know enough about their individual positions to
say whether this speculation is fully justified. Behringer also counts the
bishop of Eichstätt (i.e., Raymund Anton von Strasoldo), among the sup-
porters of Gassner; Behringer, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern. Volksmagie,
Glaubenseifer und Staatsräson in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1987), pp. 363–65, 368, 394, 468–69.
36. Wolfsgruber, Migazzi, p. 203; Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 445–46.
37. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 446–48. For the Count of Hohenlohe-
Schillingsfürst’s unsuccessful attempts to persuade his uncle, Elector
Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria, see Fieger, Sterzinger, pp. 209–15.
Gassner won backers even in the skeptical Austrian administration in
163
Freiburg: Count von Königsegg, Freiherr von Wittenbach (the vice pres-
ident of the Freiburg regime), Baron von Falckenstein, the Prince of
Fürstenberg, the Count of Wolfegg, as well as several princely prelates of
Upper Swabia. The list could be considerably extended.
38. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 448–63. The regime in Freiburg had
begun to take steps against Gassner in December of 1772, but Gassner
used a combination of physical excuses and the support of the bishop of
Chur to fend off these early inquiries, a support that was only strength-
ened after Bishop Johann Anton von Federspiel visited Vorarlberg, in-
cluding a visit to Gassner in Klösterle, in May of 1774. Hanauer thinks
it obvious that the bishop also witnessed Gassner’s healing methods.
Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 460–61. Certainly the bishop was
persuaded that Gassner’s wondrous healings went well beyond any natu-
ral explanation.
39. Gassner’s fortunes in the bishopric of Constance improved dramatically
when Franz Konrad von Rodt died in October of 1775 and was succeeded
by his brother Maximilian Christoph von Rodt, who had witnessed Gas-
sner’s cures in Ellwangen and had become a fervent admirer. Hanauer,
‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 475, n. 130.
40. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 486–87. The pastoral letter was pub-
lished in the Churbairische Intelligenzblätter no. 1 (6 January 1776), pp. 9–
14, and no. 2 (13 January 1776), pp. 22–23. For an excerpt, see Hans
Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand Sterzinger, pp. 215–18.
41. Just how many imitators Gassner inspired is an open question. With
obvious exaggeration the anonymous author of one tract complained in
1777 that on a trip through Bavaria and Austria ‘‘it seemed to me that I
had made a subterranean journey and come to a land where everyone was
crazy. The clergy had learned their art from Gassner and ran all around
curing the sick with spiritual words of power and casting out devils.’’
Paroli au Meme. Tisserant und Gassner. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deut-
schen Menschenverstandes im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (‘‘Deutschland’’ [‘‘ge-
druckt im lieben Deutschland’’] i.e., France?, 1777), fol. b4r.
42. Erwin Gatz, ed., Die Bischöfe der deutschsprachigen Länder, 1785/1803 bis
1945. Ein biographisches Lexikon (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1983),
pp. 99–103.
43. The pastoral letter was published in the Churbairische Intelligenzblätter
1776, no. 10 (5 March 1776), pp. 86–90. Gerhard Ammerer, ‘‘ ‘Gegen die
unbefugten Unternehmungen gewisser Exorcisten’—Der Hirtenbrief
Erzbischof Colloredos gegen den Wunderheiler Johann Joseph Gassner
164
von 1776,’’ Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde (2002),

pp. 141–80, esp. 147–56; the pastoral letter is reprinted pp. 163–67.
45. See for example Georg Pfeilschifter, ed., Korrespondenz des Fürstabtes Mar-
tin II. Gerbert von St. Blasien (Karlsruhe: C. F. Müller, 1934), vol. 2 (1774–
1781), pp. 403–5, 414, 416–17, 424–26, 429–30; Gerbert distributed
copies of his anonymously published Daemonurgia theologice expensa, seu de
potestate daemonum in rebus humanis deque potestate in daemones a Christo
ecclesiae relicta (n.p., 1776), in an effort to gain a wider hearing for the sorts
of exorcisms that Gassner performed, but he had not originally composed
the work with that in mind. Georg Pfeilschifter discovered that the work
was identical to Disquisitio VII of Gerbert’s earlier De energumenis eorum-
que exorcismis, reprinted in volume 2 of his Vetus Liturgia alemannica (St.
Blasien, 1776), pp. 561–792.
46. Politische Frage, ob ein weislich regierender Landesfürst über die Gassnerischen
Kuren ohne Nachteil seiner Unterthanen, noch länger gleichgültig seyn kann
(n.p., 1775). Hanauer, the Bavarian State Library in Munich, and the
Leopold Sophien Bibliothek in Überlingen identify the author as a cer-
tain C. R. Reisach. Freiherr Joseph Edler von Sartori thought the author
was Ferdinand Sterzinger: Politische Gedanken über die nötige Untersuchung
Gassners und der Patienten (Augsburg: Johann Franz Xaver Crätz, 1776),
p. 21.
47. Politische Frage, pp. 19–23.
48. Politische Frage, pp. 25–27, 34–37, 45–47.
49. Joseph Edler von Sartori, Politische Gedanken über die nötige Untersuchung
Gassners und der Patienten (Augsburg: Johann Franz Xaver Crätz, 1776).
50. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, p. 277, n. 80; Gagliardo, Reich
and Nation, p. 199; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 30, p. 378. Sartori
was later a librarian in Göttingen and Vienna. His earlier contributions to
the Gassner controversy (all anonymous) include:
(a) Sendschreiben des Herrn H.R. von . . . an den Herrn H.R. Mitglied der
churbayrischen Akademie in München. Ueber einige von dem Herr Gassner
Pfarrer in Klösterle während seines Aufenthalts in Ellwangen unternom-
mene Operationen, 1774. (The last page is signed ‘‘Euer Wohlgebohrn,
Ellwangen, den 23sten December 1774.’’)
(b) Die Aufgedeckten Sterzingerischen Lügen, Keckheit, und Unwissenheit, aus
unwiderstösslichen Wahrheiten beleuchtet, 1775.
(c) Merkwürdige Heilungen und Facta/welche sich zu Ellwangen bei dem
hochehrwürdigen HERRN Johann Joseph Gassner, Sr. Hochfürstlichen
165
Gnaden Bischoffen zu Regensburg, Fürsten und Probsten zu Ellwangen etc.

geistlichen Rath und Hof-Cappellan in dem Jahr 1775. zugetragen, 1775.
(d) Der entlarvte Lügner, Durch Anmerkungen Ueber Prüfende Anmer-
kungen zu dem Sendschreiben des H. Hr. von ——— an den H. Hr———
Mitglied der Churbayerischen Akademie in München; über einige von dem
Herrn Gassner, Pfarrer in Klösterle, während seines Aufenthalts in Ell-
wangen unternommene Operationen. Dargestellt von einem Wahrheits-
freund und Augenzeugen, 1775.
(e) Gassners Lehre ohne Vorurtheil: oder Beweiss, dass die Lehre Gassners
der Heiligen Schrift, den Satzungen der Kirche, den Meinungen der heil.
Väter—und anderer heiliger, frommer und gelehrter Männer von ver-
schiedenem Zeit-Alter gemäss seye; mit Anmerkungen verbessert, 1775.
(‘‘In Deutschland’’ [The British Library Catalog identifies the place
of publication as Regensburg]).
51. Sartori, Politische Gedanken, pp. 7–10, 12–15, 27–29. These doubts had
been stirred by a report in the Sulzbachische Intelligenzblatt, no. 9 (5 Octo-
ber 1775).
52. Sartori, Politische Gedanken, pp. 31–32. On the possible reasons for Sar-
tori’s change of mind in 1776, see Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp.
391–93.
53. Sartori, Politische Gedanken, pp. 34–44, 50–52.
54. ‘‘Janus de St. Babilas’’ [pseud.], Der entlarvte Gassner dem Salzburger Hir-
tenbrief entgegengesetzt (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1776), pp. 17, 27–28, 36–
38, 40–46, 74–95.
55. ‘‘Janus de St. Babilas,’’ Der entlarvte Gassner, p. 141; see Ammerer,
‘‘ ‘Gegen die unbefugten Unternehmungen gewisser Exorcisten,’ ’’ pp.
161–62.
57. Loschert was wrong about Candidus Brognolo, Minorite of Bergamo,
whose works (both the Manuale exorcistarum ac parochorum [Bergamo,
1651; Venice, 1673] and the Alexicacon, hoc est de maleficiis et morbis malef-
icis [Venice, 1668 and 1714]) were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in
1727. Gelasius de Cilia, OSA, was dean of SS. Andreas and Magnus in
Stadt am Hof (Regensburg) and the popular author of the large compila-
tion Locupletissimus Thesaurus continens varias . . . Benedictiones, coniura-
tiones, exorcismos . . . (Augsburg, 1715, and often reprinted; the 10th ed.
was Augsburg: Rieger, 1782); it was translated into German as Geistliche
Kranken-Hülff zum ewigen Leben (Regensburg, 1743) and seems to have
survived the scrutiny of the Index of Forbidden Books. See also Girolamo
166
NOTES TO PAGE 57
Baruffaldi, Ad rituale romanum commentaria (Dillingen, 1735), which lists

(at n. 107) five kinds of exorcism: praecepta communia, probativa, leni-
tiva, instructiva, and expulsiva. Gassner may well have learned to elevate
the healing power of Jesus’ name from the pastor of Scheer, Franz Anton
Reichle’s Der triumphierliche Namen Jesus, das ist . . . Hilfs-Mittel, Durch
welches ein jeglicher katholischer Christ . . . sich, und die Seinige von allem
Unheil bewahren, allen Unfall des bösen Feinds abtreiben, alles Malefitz zer-
nichten, ja gar den leidigen Teufel selbsten des allerheiligsten Namen Jesus
verjagen und überwinden kan (Constance: Parcus, 1753; Constance: Lab-
hart, 1761; reprinted at the time of Gassner’s visit, Sulzbach: Galwitz,
1775).
58. Nikolaus von Hontheim had studied with Zeger Bernard van Espen. See
above note 13. The quotation is from [Oswald Loschert], Altes und neues
System, des geheimen Streits mit den Geistern der Finsternissen, von dem
Hochwürdigen und Hochgelehrten Herrn, Johann Joseph Gassner, Seiner
Hochfürstlichen Gnaden, Bischofen und Fürsten zu Regenspurg, auch Gefür-
steten Probsten zu Ellwangen, geistlichen Rath und Hofkaplan, dermaligen
Dechand und Pfarrer zu Pondorf etc. durch unverneinliche Thatsachen erneue-
ret, und von einem seiner Freunden aus dem christlichen Alterthum erkläret
und bestättiget. / Opera Dei revelare et confiteri honorificum est. Tobiae 12.
v. 7. Die Werke Gottes offenbaren und bekennen, ist rühmlich (n.p., 1778),
p. clxxiii; this large work consists of a foreword by Loschert, pp. i–clxxx,
followed by an edited text of the Sulzbach protocols of Gassner’s healings
there, pp. 1–303. The reports from Sulzbach were also published sepa-
rately as Verzeichnis der merkwürdigsten Operationen, welche im Jahre 1775
zu Sulzbach, so wohl an dem Hofe, und in Gegenwart Ihro Hochfürstlichen
Durchlaucht, der verwittibten Frauen Pfalzgräfin etc. als in der St. Leonards-
Kapelle, von dem hochwürdigen und hochgelehrten Herrn Johann Joseph Gass-
ner . . . wie auch von den von ihm vorher unterrichteten Patienten selbst, durch
die wirkende Kraft des heiligsten Namens Jesus geschehen sind. . . . Nebst einem
Anhang einiger wunderbaren Begebenheiten in Ellwangen den 21. Oct. 1777
(Frankfurt: Hanau and Leipzig, 1778).
59. Instrvctionale Romano-Bambergense, sive Congeries Instrvctionvm tvm clericis,
tvm laicis necessariarvm pro sacramentorvm congrva administratione, nec non
pro benedictionvm, processionvm, concionvm, catechismorvm, imo et testamen-
torvm debita ordinatione [sic] ac praxi etc. Authoritate Ordinaria ad vsvm
cleri bambergensis edita (Bamberg: Typis Ioannis Georgii Christoph. Gert-
ner, Princ. aul. et rev’mi cap. typographi, 1773). In this Instructionale,
exorcism is defined as the ‘‘adjurations by which demons possessing,
167
oppressing, or harming [obsidentes, opprimentes, vel maleficiantes] hu-

man bodies through invocation of the divine name; either the imperative
adjuration when the exorcist orders the demon or the creature whom the
demon inhabits, by divine mercy; that he should desist from possessing or
harming; or the deprecative adjuration when the highest best God is
asked through his infinite goodness to expel the demon so that the person
not suffer any more harms from created things,’’ p. 356 (my rather literal
translation). Note that here too exorcisms were recommended against
more than just full demonic possession. On such matters, see the learned
article on ‘‘Teufel’’ by Henry Ansgar Kelly in Theologische Realenzyklo-
pädie, vol. 33 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), pp. 124–34.
Chapter 3. Healing
1. As Gassner’s defenders never tired of pointing out, the reforms of 1614

did not explicitly require the exclusive use of the Rituale Romanum in
matters of exorcism and regional, diocesan, and national variants con-
tinued to be produced well into the eighteenth century. Scholars very
much need a thorough study of the publication history of the various
rituals for blessing and exorcism in the early modern period.
2. Actually Gassner made a return visit to Ellwangen in October of 1777 and
resumed healings and exorcisms for a brief period there, in the presence
of Duke Ludwig Eugen of Württemberg and Prince Karl Albert von
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst. Josef Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner und
Wunderheiler Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779),’’ Beiträge zur Ge-
schichte des Bistums Regensburg (ed. Georg Schwaiger and Paul Mai) 19
(1985), pp. 303–545, at p. 351.
3. I have not recovered the manuscript protocols of Gassner’s healings and
exorcisms in the diocese of Constance (summer of 1774) or in Ellwangen
(November 1774–spring 1775), and so for these campaigns I have relied
upon the dense descriptions that were published and republished during
the controversies surrounding these events.
4. He explicitly said, ‘‘Als ich nun vor 2 Jahren ein Contradiction und als
wan der gleichen geistliche hilff ein bure einbildung wäre von Herrn v.
Sternbach hören mueste habe von selber Zeit an alle dergleichen hilff
bedürfftige Persohnen mehresten theils auffgeschriben damit im fall ich
sollte angefochten werden sollt Persohnen kundte vorstellen und seynd
folgende. . . .’’ Feldkirch, Diözesanarchiv, Pfarrei Klösterle, Klösterle
1.2.2.1 (‘‘Diarium I, 1769 mit Nachträgen seit 1759’’), fol. 1r. The Baron
168
von Sternbach was the governor for Vorarlberg in charge of the Kloster-
tal. On Sternbach’s opposition and that of the Anterior Austrian admin-
istration in Freiburg, see Josef Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 431–
34; Gassner’s healing methods were also criticized early on by many of his
fellow priests, including especially his Klösterle fellow priest (Früh-
messer) Saler and most importantly Christian Lentsch, pastor and cham-
berlain of St. Gallenkirch; Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 449–53.
5. ‘‘letslich kombte hieher ein verheirathete weibspersohn von nassoreich
aus Tyrol mit den hinfallenden sucht behaffte durch vil jahr und es hat die
prob in beysein zweyer gerichtsmänner von hir es geben das sie obbe-
melte sucht und ist ihr auch geholffen worden.’’ Feldkirch, Diözesanar-
chiv, Pfarrei Klösterle, Klösterle 1.2.2.1 (‘‘Diarium I, 1769 mit Nacht-
rägen seit 1759’’), fol. 1v.
6. ‘‘Christian Big im Wald ware krum mit entsezlichen schmerzen ist in bey-
sein des herrn Pauemeisters von hir durch benedictio volkomen gesundt
worden als vormahlen alles mediciniren nichts genuzet.’’ Ibid., fol 2r.
7. ‘‘Franz Riedinger zue Bludenz ist an einem aug allbereith blindt ist allhir
spiritualibus vollkomen sechend worden.’’ Ibid., fol. 3r.
8. When Gassner healed those suffering from convulsions, he did not claim
that they were peculiarly demon possessed. Like almost all the others,
they had diseases that looked natural. Note that of the 130 persons re-
ported as cured in 1773, only six were labeled ‘‘malefaciato’’ (bewitched).
He did not record why he thought they were so.
9. Adam Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of
Psychological Healing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 8–9,
22, 86–88. Crabtree emphasizes Mesmer’s contribution to the study of
alternative states of consciousness and other dissociative states. In 1984
Beate Meissner submitted an M.A. thesis in psychology at the University
of Freiburg i. Br., posing this question explicitly: ‘‘Die Heilmethode des
Exorzisten Johann Joseph Gassner: Eine Urform der Psychotherapie?’’
Josef Hanauer, author of the most detailed and thorough study of Gass-
ner’s career (‘‘Der Teufelsbanner’’), concluded that the exorcist was both
a ‘‘Suggestor’’ (‘‘Der Pfarrer verfügte über eine Kraft, geistig auf Mit-
menschen einzuwirken, wie sie nur selten einem Menschen in so enor-
mem Masse eigen ist. Es ist die Macht der Suggestion,’’ p. 518) and also a
‘‘Hypnotiseur’’ (‘‘Heute sagt man, Mesmer habe den Triumph der See-
lenheilkunde eingeleitet, die Psychotherapie. Das gleiche könnte man
wohl,—der Begabung nach sogar mit noch grösserer Berechtigung—,
auch von Pfarrer Gassner behaupten,—wenn er seine Praxis nicht mit
169
einer ausnehmend unsinnigen und abergläubischen Theorie umkleidet

hätte,’’ p. 536).
10. Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining
Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999), pp. 247–49.
11. See Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1985); J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and
Theory from Bodin to Freud (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987);
David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Con-
flicts (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000); David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment
without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2001); David Ray Griffin, The Reenchantment of Science:
Postmodern Proposals (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988).
12. For these months in the summer of 1774, see Josef Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teu-
felsbanner,’’ pp. 325–36. See also Georg Pfeilschifter, ‘‘Des Exorzisten
Gassner Tätigkeit in der Konstanzer Diözese im Jahre 1774,’’ Historisches
Jahrbuch 52 (1932), 401–41.
13. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 344, citing Zapf, Zauberbibliothek (Augs-
burg, 1776), pp. 37–38.
14. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 374.
16. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 377; [Ferdinand Sterzinger], Die aufge-
deckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Aus authentischen Urkunden beleuchtet
und durch Augenzeugen bewiesen (n.p., 1775), pp. 27–36, 53: ‘‘dass unter
den Gassnerischen Operationen eine geheimnissvolle Kraft aus dem
Reiche der Natur verborgen liege. Das Reiben des Exorcisten am Cin-
gulo, das starke Drucken auf des patienten Kopf, und zwar mit der rechten
Hand and der Stirn, mit der linken am nervosen Theile des Genicks, die
Betastungen an den Pulsadern, das Rütteln, die verschiedenen Stel-
lungen, und dergleichen mehrere physikalische Vorkehrungen, wie ich
alle mit Augen gesehen habe, geben mir Anlass zu glauben, dass entweder
eine Magnetische, Electrische, oder Sympathetische Kraft die Wirk-
ungen hervorbringe, und zwar um so leichter, weil die Einbildungskraft
des Patienten ohnehin auf das stärkste bewegt wird, theils durch den
gepredigten Glauben, theils durch das starre Ansehen, theils durch das
übermässige Vertrauen auf den heiligen Mann; theils durch die ganz
gewiss eingebildete Hoffnung der Genesung, und dergleichen andere
reizende Vorbildungen, die fähig genug sind, die Phantasie in Verwirrung
170
zu setzen, und die Lebensgeister zu bewegen.’’ To bolster this argument

about the power of Einbildung, Sterzinger cited Muratori’s De viribus
imaginationis, and the Tractat de l’âme sensitive of Lamy (i.e., Guillaume
Lamy, Explication mechanique et physique des fonctions de l’âme sensitive
[Paris, 1681]), and claimed that ‘‘eveyone’’ knew what effects the ‘‘Elec-
trische, Magnetische, und Sympathische Kräfte’’ were.
17. [D. von Schad in Wallerstein], Prüfende Anmerkungen zu dem Sendschrei-
ben des H. Hr. von . . . an den H. Hr., . . . Mitgleid der Churbayerischen
Akademie in München, über einige von dem Herrn Gassner . . . in Ellwangen
unternommene Operationen. Entworfen von einem Wahrheitsfreund und
Augenzeugen (Munich and Augsburg, 1775), p. 50.
18. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 378–79. As Hanauer remarks, such at-
testations were regularly collected right after the cure, and so we cannot
tell from such evidence how permanent these improvements were.
19. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 380–81.
21. Unpartheyische Gedanken oder Etwas vor die Aerzte von der Kurart des Tit.
Herrn Gassners in Ellwangen, herausgegeben von Doct. Schisel [Schleis] ge-
druckt zu Schalbuz [Sulzbach], mit Wizgallischen Schriften, 1775, pp. 3–5,
7–16. On Schleis, see August Hirsch, ed., Biographisches Lexikon der her-
vorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und Völker, 6 vols. (Vienna and Leipzig:
Urban and Schwarzenberg, 1884–1888).
22. Fieger, Sterzinger, p. 174.
23. C. A. von Eschenmayer, ‘‘Ueber Gassners Heilmethoden,’’ Archiv für den
Thierischen Magnetismus Bd. 8, Heft 1 (1820), pp. 86 ff, here at pp. 92–93;
as cited by Burkhard Peter, ‘‘Hypnotische Selbstkontrolle. Die wirksame
Psychotherapie des Teufelsbanners Johann Joseph Gassner um 1775,’’
Hypnose und Kognition 17 (Doppelheft 1–2) (2000), pp. 19–34.
24. Churbaierische Intelligenzblätter für das Jahr 1774, no. 11 (12 November
1774), p. 167, took notice of the report or book from Kempten, Des
wohlehrwürdigen Herrn Johann Joseph Gassners . . . nützlicher Unterricht
wider den Teufel zu streiten, oder Beantwortung der Fragen: I. Kann der Teufel
dem Leib der Menschen schaden? II. Welchen am mehresten? III. Wie ist zu
helfen? The Intelliganzblatt observed that Gassner tried to make ‘‘Hexerey
and Zauberkunst’’ an essential part of religion.
25. For Sterzinger’s detailed account, see Hans Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand Ster-
zinger. Lektor der Theatiner in München, Direktor der historischen Klasse der
kurbayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bekämpfer des Aberglaubens und
171
Hexenwahns und der Pfarrer Gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Ein Beitrag zur

Geschichte der Aufklärung in Bayern unter Kurfürst Maximilian III. Joseph
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1907), pp. 179–98.
26. Ellwangisches Protokoll vom 8. Dec. 1774, eine mit zehntausend Millionen
Teufeln besessen gewesene Junge Nonne namens Maria Anna Treflerin aus
München betreffend mit Anmerkungen, 1776 (a handwritten note in the
Munich copy remarks ‘‘illustravit Don Ferd. Sterzinger Theat’’), Bay-
erische Staatsbibliothek München: Bavar, 4000–4, 18; Sterzinger quickly
published an exposé of what he regarded as the fraudulent proceedings in
Ellwangen: [Ferdinand Sterzinger], Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wun-
derkuren. Aus authentischen Urkunden beleuchtet und durch Augenzeugen be-
wiesen (n.p., 1775), which appeared in a second edition that same year, and
there seems to have been a third edition as well. See also Sterzinger’s
‘‘Diarium über meine Reise nach Ellwangen, sammt kritischen anmer-
kungen und Beylagen, vom 19 bis 24 Decemb. 1774,’’ printed in Chris-
tian Wilhelm Franz Walch, Neueste Religionsgeschichte, 6 Theil (Lemgo:
Mayer, 1777), Beylag, pp. 441–72; Hans Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand Ster-
zinger, pp. 198–200.
Herrn Gassners in Ellwangen, herausgegeben von Doct. Schisel [Schleis] ge-
druckt zu Schalbuz [Sulzbach], mit Wizgallischen Schriften, 1775, pp. 17–20,
21–38, 40; Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ p. 339.
28. Merz noted that all remarkable events were to be recorded: ‘‘alle merk-
würdige Zufälle umständlich, getreu, gesetzmässig alsogleich zu proto-
kolliren, und die erfoderlichen [sic] Augenzeugen beyzusetzen.’’ Wer war
Herr Johann Joseph Gassner?, 1778, in the collection by Alois Merz of
Augsburg in his Neueste Sammlung jener Schriften . . . , vol. 38 (Augsburg:
Johann Georg Bullmann, 1788), pp. 21–22. Merz assured his readers that
the full reports were still available in 1778, but I have been unable to
locate them.
29. Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, GR 1210/ no. 20, case no. 56: a
fifty-four-year-old man with cramps and convulsions so strong that six
persons were unable to hold him still; cf. no. 58: a woman of 52 years who
finally learned ‘‘ihr selbst helfen’’; cf. similar remarks in nos. 59, 65, 76,
78, 79, 83, 84, 96, 111, 115, 124, 143, 147, etc.
30. Oswald Loschert specifically addressed the question of how Gassner could
teach his supplicants to rid themselves of their own demons. Zweytes
Sendschreiben eines Gottesgelehrten am Tauberflusse an seinen Freund einen
Weltweisen nächst dem Donaustrom; Worinn der erstere in seinen Antworten auf
172
verschiedene an ihn gestelle Fragen, über das zeitherige Betragen des hochwür-
digen Herrn Pfarrers Gassner, bey Entdeckung und Austreibung der Geistern
der Finsterniss, von den geplagten Körpern der bey ihm hülfsuchenden Be-
drangten, seine aufrichtige, den Grundsätzen des Christenthums und einer ächten
Gottesgelahrtheit angemessene Meynung eröfnet (n.p., 1775), pp. 48–51.
31. Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, GR 1210/ no. 20: September 25;
on September 27 another case concluded with the note that a 26-year-old
widow was healed of her melancholy, sadness, and fear and of troubled
visions of her dead husband by experiencing their repeated arrival and
departure (‘‘bis sie im Stand ware solche schnell selbsten zu vertreiben’’).
On October 4 Schleis emphasized the same process in the cure of Herr
Balthasar Dillmann, a battalion surgeon from Bayreuth, whose flatulence
was so loud that he could no longer serve anyone: ‘‘Nach öfters wie-
derhollten übungen erlente er die ihme viehmahls bekannte gewesene
Heylungs arth.’’
32. Altes und neues System, des geheimen Streits mit den Geistern der Finster-
nissen, von dem Hochwürdigen und Hochgelehrten Herrn, Johann Joseph Gass-
ner, Seiner Hochfürstlichen Gnaden, Bischofen und Fürsten zu Regenspurg,
auch Gefürsteten Probsten zu Ellwangen, geistlichen Rath und Hofkaplan, der-
maligen Dechand und Pfarrer zu Pondorf etc. durch unverneinliche Thatsachen
erneueret, und von einem seiner Freunden aus dem christlichen Alterthum
erkläret und bestättiget. / Opera Dei revelare et confiteri honorificum est. To-
biae 12. v. 7. Die Werke Gottes offenbaren und bekennen, ist rühmlich (n.p.,
1778). This list was signed and attested on 21 October 1777, pp. clxxxi ff.
33. One year after Gassner’s death Alois Merz wrote that he had been called
to Ellwangen by the bishop of Regensburg (in 1777) in order to closely
observe the exorcist’s manner of healing. He noted that he later wrote a
detailed letter to Pope Pius VI and delivered it to the bishop of Re-
gensburg for transfer to Rome. Hanauer, ‘‘Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 351–52,
cites this document as Alois März, ‘‘Gutachten eines grossen Theologen
1780,’’ from the Fürstliches Hohenlohisches Archiv Neuenstein.
34. Ruth Harris, Lourdes (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 331–56; Harry W.
Paul, ‘‘The Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science in 1895,’’ French His-
torical Studies 5 (1968), pp. 298–327.
35. Harris, Lourdes, pp. 325, 344–45, 356.
36. Harris, Lourdes, pp. 304–19, 344–45. This is especially evident in her
treatment of the famous case of Pierre de Rudder. See also Thomas J.
Csordas, The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Heal-
ing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), and Thomas A.
173
Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (New

Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983), pp. 189–200.
37. The placebo has recently become controversial among the physicians
who study it. See Peter Gøtsche and Asbjørn Hrobjartsson, ‘‘Is the Pla-
cebo Powerless? An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with
No Treatment,’’ New England Journal of Medicine 344, no. 21 (24 May
2001), pp. 1594–1602; John C. Bailar III, ‘‘The Powerful Placebo and the
Wizard of Oz,’’ New England Journal of Medicine 344, no. 21 (24 May
2001), pp. 1630–32; Daniel Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘‘Placebo
Effect’’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Anne Harring-
ton, ed., The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). For a recent example of con-
fident, garden-variety biophysical reductionism, see Michael Shermer,
‘‘Demon-Haunted Brain: If the Brain Mediates All Experience, Then
Paranormal Phenomena Are Nothing More Than Neuronal Events,’’
Scientific American 288, no. 3 (March 2003), p. 25.
38. Ed Cohen, ‘‘The Placebo Disavowed: Or the Unveiling of the Bio-
Medical Imagination,’’ Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, 26 No-
vember 2002 (http://info.med.yale.edu/intmed/hummed/yjhm/regular/
ecohen1.htm ).
39. Thomas J. Csordas, Body, Meaning, Healing (New York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2002), pp. 136–37: ‘‘To explain religious phenomena of affliction
solely in medical terms is to merely put one view of the world in place of
another.’’ For a humane example of medical humility in the face of such
conundra, see Howard Spiro, The Power of Hope: A Doctor’s Perspective
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 154–81; on the ‘‘sci-
entific fallacy’’ see pp. 185–97.
40. Csordas, Body, Meaning, Healing, pp. 134–35.
41. Arthur Kleinman, Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Ex-
ploration of the Borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Arthur Kleinman, ‘‘De-
pression, Somatization and the ‘New Cross-Cultural Psychiatry,’ ’’ Social
Science and Medicine 11 (1997), pp. 3–10; see also Byron Good, Medicine,
Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
42. This seems to be the view of Felicitas Goodman, How About Demons?
Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
174
43. Anne Harrington, ed., The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
44. See Robert A. Ader and N. Cohen, ‘‘Behaviorally Conditioned Immu-
nosuppression,’’ Psychosomatic Medicine 37 (1975), pp. 333–40; Robert A.
Hahn and Arthur Kleinman, ‘‘Belief as Pathogen, Belief as Medicine:
‘Voodoo Death’ and the ‘Placebo Phenomenon’ in Anthropological Per-
spective,’’ Medical Anthropology Quarterly 4 (1983), pp. 16–19; Irving
Kirsch, Changing Expectations: A Key to Effective Psychotherapy (Pacific
Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1990); Donald D. Price and Howard L.
Fields, ‘‘The Contribution of Desire and Expectation to Placebo Anal-
gesia: Implications for New Research Strategies,’’ in Harrington, The
Placebo Effect, pp. 117–37; David B. Morris, ‘‘Placebo, Pain, and Belief: A
Biocultural Model,’’ in Harrington, The Placebo Effect, pp. 187–207.
45. See Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from
Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); David
Ray Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of
Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Morris Berman, The
Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); Alis-
ter McGrath, The Reenchantment of Nature: The Denial of Religion and the
Ecological Crisis (New York: Doubleday, 2002).
46. See Mark Kline Taylor, Beyond Explanation: Religious Dimensions in Cul-
tural Anthropology (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986), pp. 68–
75, for an attempt, following Paul Ricoeur, at an interpretation of the
dialectical relations of explanation and understanding.
Chapter 4. Interpretation
1. See Stephan Bächter, ‘‘Aberglaube und Aufklärung im 18. Jahrhundert,’’

Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins Dillingen 103 (2002), pp. 159–80; Heinz
Dieter Kittsteiner, ‘‘Die Abschaffung des Teufels im 18. Jahrhundert,’’ in
Alexander Schuller and Wollfert von Rahden, eds., Die andere Kraft. Zur
Renaissance des Bösen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), pp. 55–92.
2. Gründliche Nachricht von einer begeisterten Weibsperson (1759), as cited in
Karl Aner, Theologie der Lessingzeit (Halle, 1929; repr. Hildesheim: Olms,
1964), p. 234. Müller was the provost and superintendent of Kemberg in
the district of Wittenberg (over the border from Anhalt). Hoffmann com-
pared Lohmann’s case with the ‘‘erfurtische Liese,’’ the ‘‘halberstadti-
sche Kathrine,’’ the ‘‘quedlinburgische Magdlene,’’ and the ‘‘Baderin’’ of
175
NOTES TO PAGE 88
Württemberg. Radical Pietists were attracted to those inspired with char-

ismatic gifts. August Hermann Francke had been much influenced by
three inspired girls in the Quedlinburg-Erfurt area, Gottfried Arnold had
been similarly affected by Rosamunde von Asseburg, and Philipp Spener
had been fascinated by Johanna Eleonore Petersen. See Jeannine Black-
well, ‘‘Controlling the Demonic: Johann Salomo Semler and the Pos-
session of Anna Elisabeth Lohmann (1759),’’ in W. Daniel Wilson and
Robert C. Holub, eds., Impure Reason: Dialectic of Enlightenment in Ger-
many (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), pp. 425–42, at p. 427.
3. The Reformed pastor Johann Benjamin Gottlob Bobbe reported that by
mid-1760 she was cured. Blackwell, ‘‘Controlling the Demonic,’’ p. 434.
4. The debate about Lohmann included the following works:
(a) Gottlieb Müller, Gründliche Nachricht von einer begeisterten Weibesper-
son Annen Elisabeth Lohmännin von Horsdorf [sic] in Anhalt-Dessau aus
eigener Erfahrung und Untersuchung mitgetheilt von Gottlieb Müllern,
Probst und Superintendenten in Kemberg, auch Ehrenmitgliede der Gesell-
schaft der freyen Künste in Leipzig (Wittenberg: Johann Joachim Ahl-
feld, 1759; 2nd ed. with Anhang, 1760).
(b) Versuch einer unpartheyischen Widerlegung S. T. Sr. Hochehrwürd. Herrn
Gottlieb Müllers, Probsts und Superintendentens in Kemberg Gründlichen
Nachricht von einer begeisterten Weibesperson Annen Elisab. Lohmannin
etc. etc. aus philosophischen und physicalischen Gründen hergeleitet, von
Alethaeo Adeisidaemone (Leipzig: Lanischens Buchhandlung, 1759).
(c) Johann Salomo Semler, Abfertigung der neuen Geister und alten Irr-
tümer in der Lohmannischen Begeisterung zu Kemberg nebst theologischem
Unterricht von dem Ungrunde der gemeinen Meinung von leiblichen Be-
sitzungen des Teufels und Bezauberung der Christen (Halle: Johann Jus-
tinus Gebauer, 1760).
(d) [ Johann Benjamin Gottlob Bobbe], Vermischte Anmerkungen über Sr.
Hochehrwürden des Herrn Probstes und Superintendentens in Kemberg
Herrn Gottlieb Müllers Gründlichen Nachricht und deren Anhang von
einer begeisterten Weibesperson Annen Elisabeth Lohmännin, mitgetheilet
von Antidämoniacus (Bernberg: Christoph Gottfried Coerner, 1760).
(e) Gotthelf Friedrich Oesfeld, Gedanken von der Einwirkung guter und
böser Geister in die Menschen. Nebst beygefügter Beurtheilung eines neuern
Beyspiels einer vermeynten leiblichen Besitzung (Wittenberg: Johann
Joachim Ahlfeld, 1760).
(f ) Das bezauberte Bauernmädgen: oder Geschichte von dem jetzt in Kemberg
176
bei Wittemberg sich aufhaltenden Landmädgen Johannen [sic] Elisabethen

Lohmännin. Aufgesetzt von einem vom Urtheil Befreyeten, und mit An-
merkungen eines Rechtsgelehrten versehen (Breslau: J. E. Meyer, 1760).
(g) Georg Friedrich Meier, Georg Friedrich Meiers, der Weltweisheit or-
dentlichen Lehrers, der königlichen Academie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin
Mitglieds, und d. Z. Prorectors, philosophische Gedanken von der Wür-
kungen des Teufels auf dem Erdboden (Halle: Carl Herman Hemmerde,
1760).
(h) [‘‘Christoph Matthaeus Pfaff,’’ pseud.], Nöthige Belehrung zweyer
neuen Theologen, welche in der Geister-Lehre der Sache zu wenig und zu
viel thun: oder gebührende Anrede an Hrn. Joh. Sal. Semlern u. Gottl.
Müllern (Wittenberg, 1760), with a borrowed introduction by Johann
Georg Walch.
(i) Johann Salomo Semler Anhang zu der Abfertigung der Lohmannischen
Begeisterung worin fernere historische Umstände gesamlet werden (Halle:
Gebauer, 1760).
( j) Prof. Thomas Abbt of Frankfurt/Oder, a position paper that Johann
Salomo Semler published in his Anhang of 1760.
5. Semler’s Abfertigung ran to 328 pages. He rarely showed a tasteful sense of
proportion in his work.
6. Semler, Abfertigung, pp. 20–32. Semler cited the antique work of Johann
Georg Dorscheus, Disputatio theologica de horrenda et miserabili Sataniae
obsessione (Rostock, 1656; repr. 1714) in the edition provided by Hauber’s
Bibliotheca magica, Stück 3, pp. 162 ff. Semler may also have seen Johann
Friedrich Rübel’s, Systematische oder gründliche . . . Abhandlung von denen
fast allgemeinen Irrthümern betreffend die Besitzung des Menschen vom Teufel
(n.p, 1758). The physician Rübel was also the author of Physikalische
Abhandlung von der Gewalt des Teufels in die Körper . . . ob er den Menschen
Krankheiten zuziehen könne? (Nuremberg: Zimmermann, 1753). Johann
Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaften
und Künste, welche bisshero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden
und verbessert worden (Halle and Leipzig: Zedler, 1732–1750), at vol. 3
(1733), s.v. ‘‘Besitzung des Teufels,’’ cols. 1497–98.
7. Semler, Abfertigung, pp. 183–87, esp. p. 183 n., pp. 198 ff, where Semler
notes that the devil cannot ‘‘in his substance’’ invade the soul or the body
of human beings; at p. 249. Semler pointed out, correctly, that there is no
mention of exorcism or the casting out of demons in the Old Testament,
that the meaning of daimōn and daimonion had changed since antiquity,
177
and even claimed that there was no proof of even one truly, physically
possessed person in the Epistles or Acts of the Apostles, to say nothing of
the early church, into which exorcists were introduced in the third cen-
tury (too late to be of any authority for Semler), pp. 209–12, 243, 250–51,
254–56. In a 112-page ‘‘Anhang’’ paginated and published separately,
Semler listed all the relevant recent Lutheran works on demonology,
including all the works on Lohmann that had come to his attention.
8. Dissertatio theologico-hermeneutica de daemoniacis quorum in Evangeliis fit
mentio (Halle: Hendel, 1760); a second edition: Ioannis Salomonis Sem-
leri, Commentatio De Daemoniacis Quorum In N. T. Fit Mentio, Ed. auctior
(Halle: Hendel, 1769); an edition of 1774 is already called the fourth
edition, Commentatio de daemoniacis quorum in N.T. fit mentio, 4. ed. multo
jam auctior (Halle, 1774). An edition (it too is called the fourth) was also
published in 1779: Ioannis Salomonis Semleri, Commentatio de daemo-
niacis qvorvm in N. T. fit mentio (Halle: Hendel, 1779). I cite Semler’s
edition of 1769, here at pp. 1–2.
9. Joseph Mede (1586–1638) was the author of The apostasy of the latter times,
whose full title reveals the connections in his mind between the apoca-
lypse and his notions of demons: in which (according to divine prediction) the
world should wonder after the beast, the mystery of iniquity should so farre
prevaile over the mystery of godlinesse, whorish Babylon over the virgin-church
of Christ, as that the visible glory of the true church should be much clouded, the
true unstained Christian faith corrupted, the purity of true worship polluted: or,
the gentiles theology of dæmons, i.e. inferious divine powers, supposed to be
mediatours between God and man: revived in the latter times amongst Chris-
tians, in worshipping of angels, deifying and invocating of saints, adoring and
templing of reliques, bowing downe to images, worshipping of crosses, etc: all
which, together with a true discovery of the nature, originall, progresse of the
great, fatall, and solemn apostasy are cleared / delivered in publique some years
since upon I. Tim. 4. 1, 2, 3 (London: Richard Bishop for Samuel Man,
1642).
10. Commentatio de daemoniacis, p. 3, n. 4. Semler cited the maxim of ‘‘Beauso-
brius’’ in his Remarques on Mark 8:19: ‘‘le miracle est toujours le même,
de quelque cause vienne le mal.’’ Ibid., p. 4, n. 5.
11. Aner, Die Theologie der Lessingzeit, pp. 238–39.
12. Semler cited such authors as Hesiod, Homer, Thales, Pythagoras, Eurip-
edes, Plato, Aristotle, Porphyry, and Philo; Commentatio, pp. 6–11; see
also pp. 17, 23, n. 19, 28–29, 31–32. If demon possession was a necessary
part of the faith, then why, Semler asked, are the Old Testament and the
178
New Testament Epistles silent on the matter? And so ‘‘profecto illae

plebis opiniones nobis hodie legem non scribunt’’ (p. 32).
13. The anonymous author identifies himself as ‘‘T. P. A. P. O. A. B. I. T.
C. O. S.’’ (i.e., The Precentor and Prebendary of Alton Borealis in the
Church of Salisbury, i.e., A. A. Sykes), An Enquiry into the Meaning of
Demoniacks in the New Testament (London: Roberts, 1737); a second edi-
tion was published in the same year. On Sykes, see Lesley Stephen, ed.,
Dictionary of National Biography.
14. Enquiry, pp. 2–5, 7, 33–35, 56, citing among many other sources Hesiod,
Opera 1; the Scholiast on Homer, Iliad 1.222; Justin Martyr, who de-
clared, in Apol. 2, that the gods of the heathen were demons and nothing
more than the psychai apothanatōn; and Josephus, in De bello judaico 7.23,
who had asserted that the souls of wicked men were ‘‘daimonia, tauta
ponērōn esin anthropōn pneumata.’’
15. Enquiry, pp. 48–53.
16. These included:
(a) [Leonard Twells], An Answer to the Enquiry into the Meaning of the
Demoniacks in the New Testament (London, 1737).
(b) [Thomas Church], An Essay Towards Vindicating the Literal Sense of the
Demoniacks in the New Testament. In Answer to a late Enquiry into the
Meaning of them (London: J. Roberts, 1737).
(c) [Arthur Ashley Sykes], A Further Enquiry Into the Meaning of Demoni-
acks in the New Testament / Wherein the Enquiry is vindicated against the
objections of the Rev’d Mr. Twells, and the Author of the Essay in Answer to
it (London: J. Roberts, 1737).
(d) William Whiston, An Account of the Daemoniacks, and of the Power of
Casting out Daemons, both in the New Testament, and in the Four First
Centuries. Occasioned by a Late Pamphlet intituled, An Enquiry into the
meaning of Daemoniacks in the New Testament. To which is added, an
Appendix, concerning the Tythes and Oblations paid by Christians, during
the same Four Centuries (London: printed for John Whiston, at Mr.
Boyle’s Head, 1737).
(e) [Thomas Church], A Reply to the Farther Enquiry Into the Meaning of
the Demoniacks in the New Testament (London: J. Roberts, 1738).
(f ) Leonard Twells, An Answer to the Further Enquiry into the Meaning of
the Demoniacks in the New Testament . . . In a Second Letter to the Author
(London: R. Gosling, 1738).
(g) S. T. P. A. P. O. A. B. I. T. C. O. [probably A. A. Sykes again], Some
Thoughts on the Miracles of Jesus; With an Introduction to that of His
179
NOTES TO PAGE 92
Casting out Devils, Which is particularly discuss’d. Occasion’d by Two Late

Tracts, Intitled, Enquiries into the Meaning of Demoniacks in the New
Testament. By an impartial Hand (London: J. Roberts, 1738).
(h) Thomas Hutchinson, The Usual Interpretation of DAIMONES and
DAIMONIA, in the New Testament, asserted in a Sermon preach’d before
the University of Oxford at St. Mary’s, On Sunday, March 5, 1737–8
(Oxford, 1738).
(i) ‘‘A Gentleman of Wadham College’’, A Critical Dissertation Concern-
ing the Words DAIMŌN and DAIMONION occasion’d by Two late En-
quiries into the Meaning of Demoniacks in the New Testament. In a Letter
to a Friend (London: printed for J. Crockatt; sold by J. Roberts in
Warwick Lane, 1738). Note that the Dictionary of National Biography
unwittingly suggests two possible authors as the ‘‘gentleman of Wad-
ham College’’: George Costard and John Swinton. See the separate
entries for each of them.
( j) [Bodleian Library catalogue lists the author as Gregory Sharpe,
1713–1771], A Review of the Controversy about the meaning of Demoni-
acks in the New-Testament . . . by a Lover of Truth, with an Appendix in
Answer to the Critical Dissertation etc. (London: John Roberts, 1739).
(k) Samuel Pegge, An Examination of the Enquiry into the Meaning of
Demoniacs in the New Testament [by A. A. Sykes]. In a Letter to the
Author. Wherein it is shewn That the Word Demon does not signify a
Departed Soul, either in the Classics or the Scriptures; And consequently,
That the whole of the Enquiry is without Foundation (London: Fletcher
Giles, 1739).
(l) [Thomas Church], A Short State of the Controversy about the Meaning
of the Demoniacks in the New Testament: with a Vindication of the Reply to
the Farther Enquiry, from all the Objections of a late Tract, intitled A
Review of the Controversy, By the same Hand (London, 1739).
(m) Thomas Hutchinson, Remarks upon a Pamphlet, intitl’d A Review of the
Controversy about the Meaning of Demoniacs, etc. Wherein the Sermon,
Which asserteth the usual interpretation, etc. is vindicated from every ex-
ception of the Reviewer (London: W. Innys and R. Manby, 1739).
17. In fact, Semler assisted in the translation or editing of several of these
English works. Over his career he oversaw and introduced German trans-
lations of David Neal (1762), Samuel Clarke (1774), Hugh Farmer (1776,
1783), Arthur Ashley Sykes (1778, 1779), and Thomas Townson (1783–
84). He also edited German versions of Richard Simon (1776) and
Balthasar Bekker (1781–82). But see also Johann Christoph Friedrich
180
Schulz, Untersuchungen über die Bedeutung des Wortes Satan und Teufel in
der Bibel, trans. Johann Christoph Friedrich Schulz (Leipzig: Weygand,
1774), a translation of Thomas Barker (1722–1809), An inquiry into the
scripture meaning of the word Satan and its synonymous terms, the devil, or the
adversary, and the wicked-one: wherein also, the notions concerning devils, of
demons, are brought down too the standard of scripture; the whole interspersed
with remarks on various terms, passages, and phrases in the Old and New
Testaments (London: J. Wheble, 1772). Barker was also the author of The
Nature and Circumstances of the Demoniacks in the Gospels, stated and meth-
odized and considered in the several particulars (London: B. White, 1783).
18. Miracles attracted the attentions of many, including William Whiston,
Conyers Middleton, Thomas Woolston, Bishop Richard Smalbroke,
Bishop Benjamin Hoadly of Bangor, A. A. Sykes, Leonard Twells (Boyle
Lecturer 1739–1741), Nathaniel Lardner, Arthur Young, William
Worthington, and later Hugh Farmer, most of whom also wrote on de-
mon possession. The English debate of 1737 actually had its origins in the
scandalous writings of Thomas Woolston (A Defense of the Miracle of the
Thundering Legion [1726] and Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour
[1727–29]). See Arthur Young’s attack on Woolston in A Dissertation on
the Gospel-Daemoniacks (London: G. Woodfall, 1760) and the DNB vol.
21, pp. 908–10, on Woolston. See also John Hunt, Religious Thought in
England: From the Reformation to the End of the Last Century. A Contribution
to the History of Theology, 3 vols. (London: Strahan and Co., 1870–73), vol.
3, pp. 16–251.
19. ‘‘Die dogmatische Unterricht der Schrift betrifft niemalen leibliche
Dinge.’’ Cf. Galileo Galilei, ‘‘Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
(1615),’’ in Stillman Drake, trans. and ed., Discoveries and Opinions of Gali-
leo (New York: Doubleday, 1957), pp. 145–216, esp. 185–86, 205–10.
Galileo depended heavily upon St. Augustine’s De Genesi ad literam, a
work that Semler too could easily have known. Johann Salomo Semler,
Umständliche Untersuchung der dämonischen Leute oder so genanten Beses-
senen, nebst Beantwortung einiger Angriffe (Halle: Gebauer, 1762), pp. 4–5,
24–26, 66–67, 83–86, 254.
20. Semler here repeated much that he had written in Latin two years earlier,
but included specific arguments against Johann Stephen Müller’s No-
tionem daimoniō sive daimonos olim et inprimis Christi tempore non hoc invol-
visse ut anima mortui daemon esse crederetur eosque homines qui dicunt habet
ille daemonem non opinatos fuisse animam mortui cuiusdam impedire et turbare
animam viventis rationalem a . . . demonstrat Johann Stephan Müller, Johann
181
Burckhard Caspar, respondent (Theol. diss., University of Jena, 1761)—

Semler cited the published version (Frankfurt, 1762). Müller published a
second comment on Semler’s demonology, and they were published to-
gether as De Daemoniacis Semlerianis: In Dvabvs Dissertationibvs Theologicis
(Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1763). Semler also attacked an ‘‘unreasonable
review’’ (‘‘Recension der Lohmannischen Comödie’’), printed in the sec-
ond and third parts of the Neue Beyträge von alten und neuen theologischen
Sachen, Büchern, Urkunden, Controversien, Anmerkungen und Vorschlägen:
zum Wachsthum d. theolog. Gelehrsamkeit, wie auch d. alten u. neuen Kirchen-
u. Gelehrtengeschichte etc. . . . mitgetheilet (Leipzig: Jacobi, 1761), which he
characterized (p. 183) as nothing more than ignorant screaming at his
dissertation.
In 1760 the current authority on demoniacs in Germany and Switzer-
land was Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693–1754), the biblical scholar of
Basel, against whom many tested their learning: e.g., Johann G. Faber,
Dissertatio Academica de Daemoniacis, adversus Wetstenium, Praeses Ioannes
Gottlieb Faber, Respondens M. Carolus Fried. Renz, Kirchhemio Tec-
censis (Tübingen: Cotta and Reuss, [1763]).
21. Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1974), esp. pp. 62–63, 109, 223–32.
22. A few scholars have begun to rectify the imbalance at least with respect to
the debate between Enlightened theology and Protestant Orthodoxy. See
Heimo Reinitzer and Walter Sparn, eds., Verspätete Orthodoxie. Über
D. Johann Melchior Goeze, 1717–1786 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,
1989); Gerhard Freund, Theologie im Widerspruch. Die Lessing-Goeze-
Kontroverse (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1989); Norbert Haag, Predigt und
Gesellschaft. Die lutherische Orthodoxie in Ulm, 1640–1740 (Mainz: von
Zabern, 1992). The study of Catholic biblical criticism during the cen-
turies after Trent has, however, languished, but see Gerald P. Fogarty,
American Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A History from the Early Republic to
Vatican II (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989); George Armstrong
Kelly, The Church’s Problem with Bible Scholars (Chicago: Franciscan Her-
ald Press, 1985); Yvon Belaval and Dominique Bourel, eds., Le siècle des
Lumières et la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986).
23. Notker Hammerstein, ‘‘Was heisst Aufklärung in katholischen Univer-
sitäten Deutschlands?’’ in Harm Klueting, Norbert Hinske, and Karl
Hengst, eds., Katholische Aufklärung—Aufklärung im katholischen Deutsch-
land (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1993), pp. 142–62, esp. 152–55. Karl Josef
182
Lesch, Die Neuorientierung der Theologie im 18. Jahrhundert in Würzburg

und Bamberg (Würzburg: Echter, 1978), on the renewed importance of
history and biblical exegesis based in knowledge of the ancient languages,
pp. 144–45, 158, 163, 203–4, 210–11, 222–24, 237–38, 243, 267–71,
290–91.
24. Behringer, Hexenverfolgung, pp. 371–93, provides a circumstantial ac-
count of the Bavarian ‘‘witchcraft war’’ of the 1760s. The chief defenders
of Sterzinger were Andreas Ulrich Mayer (writing under the humorous
pseudonym F. N. Blocksberger), imperial counselor Konstantin Florian
von Kautz, Heinrich Braun OSB of Tegernsee, Josef Sterzinger of Inns-
bruck (younger brother of Ferdinand Sterzinger), Jordan Simon OSA
of Erfurt (writing under the pseudonym Arduino Ubbidiente dell’Osa),
Jacob Anton Kollmann (writing under the pseudonym of an anonymous
‘‘doubting Bavarian’’), and Peter von Osterwald of the Bavarian Academy
of Sciences. See also Hans Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand Sterzinger. Lektor der
Theatiner in München, Direktor der historischen Klasse der kurbayerischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bekämpfer des Aberglaubens und Hexenwahns
und der Pfarrer Gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Aufklärung in Bayern unter Kurfürst Maximilian III. Joseph (Munich: Old-
enbourg, 1907), pp. 97–150.
25. Eutychii Benjamin Transalbini [Fortunatus Durich], Dissertatio philologica
de vocibus Hhartymmim et Belahatehem. Exod. VII. 11 (Munich, 1767).
Durich’s pseudonym referred to his origins as a Bohemian. ‘‘Eutychius’’
means fortunate. Aloys von Sonnenfels, Sendschreiben des hochedelgebohr-
nen Herrn Aloysius von Sonnenfels . . . an den hochgelehrten Herrn P. don
Ferdinand Sterzinger, . . . über zwey Wörter Chartummim und Belahatehem:
nachmals zur nothwendigen Belehrung . . . zum Drucke befördert, von einem
Verehrer des Sterzingerischen Namens (Vienna, 1768). Sonnenfels is best
known perhaps as a student of alchemy, but his theological and biblical
knowledge need to be better studied.
26. See Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung
des Alten Testaments, 3rd ed. (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982),
pp. 6, 40–41, 66–73, 92, 290–94; this assessment does not deny the
enormous disparity in research effort between Protestants and Catholics.
It is also clear that orthodox Catholic theologians reacted with fear and
hostility to these early welcoming gestures toward learned biblical exe-
gesis. By the early nineteenth century, most of these efforts had been
stifled.
27. Fieger, P. Don Ferdinand, pp. 112–18. Sometimes we need to remind
183
NOTES TO PAGE 96
ourselves that Salzburg, just to take one example, lies only 160 miles to
the north of Venice, at least as the swallow flies. Culturally, Stuttgart was
farther away.
28. In German Muratori was best known for three works: De ingeniorum
moderatione et in religionis negotio (published under the pseudonym Lamin-
dus Pritanius, 1714), Della regolata divozione dei cristiani (1723), and Della
carità cristiana in quanto essa è amore del prossimo (1723), which were all
published in frequent German translations down to the end of the eigh-
teenth century. On the question of demons he was best known for his De
superstitione vitanda (1742) and Della forza della fantasia umana (Venice:
Pasquali, 1745), published in German as Über die Einbildingskraft des Men-
schen, ed. Georg Hermann Richerz (Leipzig: Weygand, 1785).
29. Behringer, Hexenverfolgung, pp. 369–70; Scipione Maffei, Arte magica
dileguata (Verona, 1749), p. 17; Maffei, Arte magica annichilata (Verona,
1754); Gian Paolo Romagnani, ed., Scipione Maffei nell’Europa del Sette-
cento: Atti del convegno, Verona, 23–25 settembre 1996 (Verona: Consorzio
Ed. Veneti, 1998); Gian Paolo Romagnani, ‘‘Sotto la bandiera dell’istoria’’:
eruditi e uomini di letterre nell’Italia del Settecento: Maffei, Muratori, Tar-
tarotti (Sommacampagna [Verona]: Cierre, 1999); G. P. Marchi, ‘‘Tra
sofferenza psichica e modalità di comunicazione: La stregoneria nel pen-
siero di Scipione Maffei,’’ in Luciano Bonuzzi and Gian Paolo Marchi,
eds., Psicopatologia e filosofia nella tradizione veronese (Verona: AASLVR,
1994), pp. 37–49; G. Di Marco, ‘‘Oscillazioni tra razionale e irrazionale:
Tartarotti, Maffei e la pollemica diabolica des XVIII secolo,’’ in Bonuzzi
and Marchi, eds., Psicopatologia, pp. 25–36. The influence of Muratori
north of the Alps is well known; see Eleonore Zlabinger, Lodovico Mura-
tori und Österreich (Veröffentlichungen der Universität Innsbruck no. 53;
Innsbruck, 1970); Adam Wandruszka, ‘‘Der Reformkatholizismus des 18.
Jahrhunderts in Italien und Österreich. Neue Forschungen und Fra-
gestellungen,’’ in Alexander Novotny and O. Pockl, eds., Festschrift für
Hermann Wiesflecker zum 60. Geburtstag (Graz: Historisches Institut der
Universität, 1973), pp. 231–40; Peter F. Barton, Jesuiten, Jansenisten,
Josephiner. Eine Fallstudie zur frühen Toleranzzeit: Der Fall Innocentius Fess-
ler (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1978), pp. 137–40.
30. [Ferdinand Sterzinger], Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren 2nd
ed. (n.p., 1775), p. 46. The works upon which Gassner apparently relied
were
(a) Ubald Stoiber, Armamentarium ecclesiasticum: complectens Arma spiri-
tualia fortissima ad insultus diabolicos elidendos, et feliciter superandos;
184
ad utilitatem omnium animarum Pastorum, sedulò ex ipso S. Evangelii

fonte . . . collecta (1st ed. Augsburg, 1726; 3rd ed., Editio tertia Pede-
ponti [= Stadt am Hof, near Regensburg]: Gastl, 1744); forbidden
1754.
(b) Candido Brognolo, Manuale exorcistarum ac parochorum: Hoc est Trac-
tatus de curatione, ac protectione divina (Bergomum, 1651); forbidden
1727.
(c) Girolamo Menghi, Compendio dell’arte essorcistica, et possibilita delle
mirabili, et stupende operationi delli demoni et dei malefici (Bologna 1586);
forbidden 1709.
(d) Girolamo Menghi, Flagellum daemonum exorcismos terribiles, potentis-
simos, et efficaces (Bologna 1586; Venice, 1644; Frankfurt: Johann
Adolph, 1708); forbidden 1709.
(e) Stephanus Coletus, Energumenos dignoscendi et liberandi, tum maleficia
quaelibet dissolvendi, nec non benedictiones utiliter conficiendi super aegrotos
compendiaria et facillima ratio; forbidden 1763.
(f ) Anonyma quaestiuncula ex eodem opusculo desumta de liberandis ener-
gumenis, seclusa licentia ordinarii (Venice, 1762); forbidden 1763.
Perhaps he also knew Manuale Benedictionum continens variarum rerum,
tum benedictiones, tum exorcismos, ac coniurationes, ad pellenda maleficia, vel
cavenda [et]c. Collectum: ex Romano et aliarum diversarum dioecesium ritu-
alibus, ad usum parochorum, aliorumq[ue] sacerdotum duplici Indice, et aliquot
Benedictionibus: Auctum et ad commodiorum usum, ac methodum de novo im-
pressum MDCLXIV (Bruntruti [= Porrentruy]: Straubhar, 1664). See
Franz Heinrich Reusch, Der Index der verbotenen Bücher. Ein Beitrag zur
Kirchen- und Literaturgeschichte 2 vols. (Bonn, 1883–1885; repr. Aalen:
Scientia Verlag, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 218–23. On the Italian exorcists, ortho-
dox and unorthodox, see Elena Brambilla, ‘‘La fine dell’esorcismo: Pos-
sessione, santità, isteria dall’età barocca all’illuminismo,’’ Quaderni Storici
112 (2003), pp. 117–63, at pp. 122–25, 141–43.
31. [Sterzinger], Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren, 2nd ed., pp. 44–
49.
32. Ibid., ‘‘Katechismus von der Geisterlehre,’’ pp. 56–88, at pp. 59 and 84.
33. Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner,’’ pp. 363–64; in 1778 Gassner had written
to Oswald Loschert that he had lately discovered a universal rule, that ‘‘all
conditions that do not come from a lesion [i.e., a wound or injury] come
from the devil.’’ By 1779 he had privately gone even further.
34. On the social constellation of opponents of Sterzinger and backers of
Gassner, see Behringer, Hexenverfolgung, pp. 373–80, 391, 394–96. On
185
the Augsburg Jesuits, see Hildegard Mahler, Das Geistesleben Augsburgs im

18. Jahrhundert im Spiegel der Augsburger Zeitschriften (Ph.D. disser-
tation, Munich 1934; published Augsburg: Haas and Grabherr, 1934),
pp. 121–36.
35. Augsburg was so favorable a city for Gassner that the publisher Stage
complained to Sterzinger that he had been compelled to print Sterzinger’s
attack on Gassner (Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren) in Ulm.
See Joseph Hanauer, Der Exorzist Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779).
Eine Monographie (unpublished theological Dissertation, University of
Würzburg, 1950), p. 81, n. 3. It was perhaps mainly his intemperate
attacks on Gassner that caused Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart to be
banished from Augsburg along with his famous Deutsche Chronik. On the
ex-Jesuits and Gassner in general, see Hanauer, Der Exorzist, pp. 84–85.
36. See Etienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken
in Augsburg, 1648–1806 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1991); Alois Merz
was cathedral preacher from 1763 to 1785. He was born in 1727 in
Donsdorf in Swabia, joined the Society of Jesus in 1744, and died in 1792.
Note that there were four Catholic writers in the second half of the
eighteenth century with the names Merz or März. In addition to Alois,
these were: Angelus (Agnellus) März, O. Aug., of Munich, who died 30
June 1784; Angelus März, OB of Scheyern, who died 3 February 1784;
and Philipp Paul Merz, from Augsburg, who converted to Roman Catho-
licism in 1725 and died in Augsburg in 1754.
37. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre
1781, vol. 7 (Berlin and Stettin: Nicolai, 1786), pp. 113–20. I have used
the reprint edited by Bernhard Fabian and Marie-Luise Spieckermann,
Friedrich Nicolai, Gesammelte Werke (Hildesheim: Olms, 1994), vol. 18.
38. Gründlicher Beweis, dass die Art, mit welcher der nun in ganz Deutschland
berühmte hochw. Herr Pfarrer zu Klösterl Johann Joseph Gassner die Krank-
heiten zu heilen pflegt, den evangelischen Grundsätzen und den Gesinnungen
der allerersten Kirche ganz gleichförmig sey. Von einem Vertheidiger der Wahr-
heit (Augsburg: Joseph Wolf, 1775); reprinted in A. Merz, Neueste Samm-
lung jener Schriften . . ., vol. 40 (1787), pp. 1–80.
39. Gründlicher Beweis, pp. 19–20.
40. Gründlicher Beweis here citing the ninth edition of Gelasius de Cilia,
Locupletissimus Thesaurus Continens Varias Et Selectissimas Benedictiones,
Conjurationes (Augsburg: Rieger, 1772), p. 405.
41. Gründlicher Beweis, p. 33.
186
42. Gründlicher Beweis, pp. 35–37.

43. On the waning of the notion of the preternatural in the eighteenth cen-
tury, see Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of
Nature, 1150–1750, 2nd ed. (New York: Zone Books, 1998).
44. Gründlicher Beweis, pp. 62–63. Merz traveled again to Ellwangen in Octo-
ber of 1777 when Bishop Fugger arranged a brief revival of Gassner’s
healing campaign, even though by then both the pope and the emperor
had forbidden any such further activity. Merz filed a report on what he
had seen that was to be included in an appeal to Rome for a reversal.
45. Gründlicher Beweis, pp. 64n and 70n, citing Loyola, Reg. de discret. spiri-
tuum, and his Sententiae asceticae for 22 January; and Luther, Werke, Jena
edition, vol. 5, fols. 334–35, and vol. 8, fols. 375–76.
46. It is true that Semler could appeal to various aspects of Luther’s own
thought, career, and exegetical practice, but there was no denying the
massive shift in which Semler was involved. See Gottfried Hornig, Die
Anfänge der historisch-kritischen Theologie. Johann Salomo Semlers Schrift-
verständnis und seine Stellung zu Luther (Göttingen, 1961).
48. See the introduction herein.
50. [Loschert], Zweytes Sendschreiben eines Gottesgelehrten am Tauberflusse an
seinen Freund einen Weltweisen nächst dem Donaustrom, pp. 12–19, 28–30,
37–40, 48–51, 94–96. Loschert now explicitly rejected Gassner’s early
claims that demonic possession was often the result of witchcraft.
51. [Oswald Loschert] Viertes Sendschreiben eines Gottesgelehrten am Tauber-
flusse an seinen Freund einen Weltweisen, nächst dem Donaustrome; Ueber die
Frage: Ob die zeitherige Einwürfe gegen die exorcistische Handlungen des
Hochwürdigen Herrn geistlichen Raths Gassner einen zureichenden Grund
darbiethen, rechtglaubige Christen von der Anwendung seines Lehrsystems an
ihnen selbst and undern Hilfebedürftigen abzuhalten? (n.p., 1776), pp. 3–7,
80–87. Loschert continued this attack upon the neologists in his anony-
mous Fünftes Sendschrieben eines Gottgelehrten am Tauberflusse, an seinen
Freund, einen Weltweisen, nächst dem Donaustrome, oder Fortsetzung der
Fragen und Antworten, deren Absicht ist, einen Freund des Herrn Gassner
näher zu belehren, die Einwürfe seiner Gegner ferner zu widerlegen, und seine
dadurch irregemachte Nachahmer wieder zu rechte zu weisen (Frankfurt,
Hanau, Leipzig, 1776).
52. See, for example, the voluminous collections of religous news edited
187
by Johann August Ernesti, Neueste Theologische Bibliothek, 4 vols. (Leip-

zig: Breitkopf, 1771–77), which displayed no interest in contemporary
Catholicism.
53. From a letter dated 26 April 1775 from Hahn to Johann Kaspar Lavater,
cited in Horst Weigelt, Lavater und die Stillen im Lande: Distanz und Nähe.
Die Beziehungen Lavaters zu Frömmigkeitsbewegungen im 18. Jahrhundert
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988), p. 58.
54. Horst Weigelt, Johann Kaspar Lavater: Leben, Werk, Wirkung (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1991), pp. 32–33; Klaus Martin Sauer, Die
Predigttätigkeit Johann Kaspar Lavaters, 1741–1801 (Zurich: Theologi-
scher Verlag, 1988), pp. 98 ff, 150, 156, 178–82, 404 ff, 518 ff, and esp. pp.
501–5, for a treatment of Lavater’s fifteen sermons on the temptation of
Christ, delivered from 10 March 1777 through 26 October 1777. See also
Jeffrey Freedman, A Poisoned Chalice (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2002), pp. 129–33, 201–2.
55. Weigelt, Lavater, pp. 14–30.
56. Johann Georg Zimmermann (1728–1795) was a friend of Lavater and of
Goethe, the royal physician to the court of Hanover, and well known for
his popular works Betrachtungen über die Einsamkeit (1756; expanded in 4
vols. 1783–84) and Von der Erfahrung in der Arzneikunst (1763–64).
57. Zimmermann, Ueber die Einsamkeit (Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und
Reisch, 1784), vol. 1, p. 272; vol. 2, pp. 102–7n; vol. 3, p. 403; vol. 4,
pp. 77–81.
58. Johann Caspar Lavater, Auszug der Frankfurter gelehrten Anzeigen Nro 38
und 39 den 12 May 1775. Beytrag zur gelehrten Geschichte Unserer Zeit, 4
fols. signed by JCL on 3 May 1775; see Weigelt, Lavater, p. 33.
59. Weigelt, Lavater, pp. 33–35.
60. In the years after his enthusiasm for Gassner faded, Lavater became a
follower of Cagliostro and then Mesmer; see Weigelt, Lavater, pp. 36–37,
41–46.
61. Johann Georg Zimmermann, Ueber die Einsamkeit, 4 vols. (Leipzig:
Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1784), vol. 1, pp. 176–177n. On Zim-
mermann, see H.-P. Schramm, ed., Johann Georg Zimmermann, königlich
grossbritannischer Leibarzt, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, vol. 82 (Wies-
baden: Harrassowitz, 1998); Andreas Langenbacher, Mit Skalpell und
Fiederkiel: Ein Lesebuch. Johann Georg Zimmermann (Bern: Haupt, 1995); I
owe these references to the kindness of Thomas Biskup. Lavater was not
entirely mistaken in writing to Zimmermann about Gassner, for later
Zimmermann underwent a religious ‘‘conversion’’ that distanced him
188
from Nicolai and his other Enlightened friends. See Christoph Weiss,
ed., Von ‘‘Obscuranten’’ und ‘‘Eudämonisten’’: Gegenaufklärerische, konserva-
tive und antirevolutionäre Publizisten im späten 18. Jahrhundert, Literatur
im historischen Kontext, vol. 1 (St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1997); on Zimmer-
mann’s relations with the Berlin Enlightenment, see Sigrid Habersaat,
Verteidigung der Aufklärung: Friedrich Nicolai in religiösen und politischen
Debatten, Epistemata: Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Schriften, Reihe
Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 316 (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neu-
mann, 2001).
62. Johann Georg Zimmermann, Ueber die Einsamkeit, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Weid-
manns Erben und Reisch, 1784), vol. 1, pp. 176–177n, 272; vol. 2, pp. 48–
51, 102–107n.; vol. 3, pp. 402–3; vol. 4, pp. 77–81.
63. Jerome McGann, The Poetics of Sensibility (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998).
64. Gottfried Hornig, Die Anfänge der historisch-kritischen Theologie. Johann
Salomo Semlers Schriftverständnis und seine Stellung zu Luther (Göttingen,
1961); and Gottfried Hornig, Johann Salomo Semler, Studien zu Leben und
Werk des Hallenser Aufklärungstheologen (Tübingen, 1996); Andreas Lü-
der, Historie und Dogmatik. Ein Beitrag zur Genese und Entfaltung von Jo-
hann Salomo Semlers Verständnis des Alten Testaments (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1995). These works have reoriented scholarship that was for too long
bound up in the categories of Karl Aner, Theologie der Lessingzeit. For the
best single example of Semler’s theological innovation, see his Abhandlung
von freier Untersuchung des Canon, 4 parts (Halle: Carl Hermann Hem-
merde, 1771–75; repr. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1980). One can also gain a
glimpse of his method in A Christian Free Inquiry Concerning the So-Called
Revelation of St. John; Published in the Year 1769, at Halle, from the post-
humous Manuscript of a Learned Franconian [Georg Ludwig Oeder], with a
Preface and Notes by John Solomon Semleri, trans. A. George Moller (Chel-
tenham: Rowe and Norman, 1852).
65. Semler published introductions and comments to several German and
foreign works on demonology in German translation: Otto Justus Ba-
silius Hesse and Johann Salomo Semler, Versuch einer biblischen Dämono-
logie, oder Untersuchung der Lehre der heiligen Schrift vom Teufel und seiner
Macht (Halle: Hemmerde, 1776; new ed. with intro. by Dirk Fleischer,
Waltrop: Spenner, 1998); Hugh [‘‘Hugo’’] Farmer, An Essay on the De-
moniacs of the New Testament (London, 1775), trans. as Versuch über die
Dämonischen des Neuen Testamentes. Aus dem Englischen von L. F. A. von
Cöln. Nebst einer Vorrede D. Joh. Sal. Semlers (Bremen and Leipzig, 1776;
189
NOTES TO PAGE 106
repr. with intro. by Dirk Fleischer, Waltrop: Spenner, 2000); Hugh

[‘‘Hugo’’] Farmer, Letters to the Rev. Dr. Worthington, in answer to his late
publication, intituled ‘‘An impartial Enquiry into the Case of the Gospel De-
moniacs’’ (London, 1778), trans. as Hugo Farmers Briefe an D. Worthington
über die Dämonischen in den Evangelien, mit Zusätzen und einer Vorr., den
Begriff von Inspiration zu bessern, von D. Joh. Sal. Semler (Halle: Gebauer,
1783; repr. with an intro. by Dirk Fleischer, Waltrop: Spenner, 2000);
Balthasar Bekker, De betoverde weereld, 4 books (Amsterdam: van den
Dalen, 1691–93), trans. as D. B. Bekkers . . . bezauberte Welt. Neu über-
setzt . . . Durchgesehen und vermehret von . . . J. S. Semler, 4 vols. (Leipzig:
Johann Moritz Schwager, 1781–82).
66. Hugh Farmer, An Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testament (London,
1775); a second edition was published in London in 1805 by the Uni-
tarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of
Virtue. By 1805 it had obviously become easier to recognize Farmer as a
Unitarian. Unfortunately, by far the best treatment of the general prob-
lem of English notions of magic, Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and
Culture: 1736–1951 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999),
ignores these scholarly disputes while paying close attention to popular
culture. The same is true of his Cunning-folk: Popular Magic in English
History (London: Hambledon and London, 2002). After the 1730s the
English dispute had calmed down a bit, but the basic issues remained
unresolved; note these continuing contributions (and this list is far from
complete):
(a) Richard Mead, Medica sacra, sive de morbis insignioribus, qui in Bibliis
memorantur, commentarius (Amsterdam: Mortier, 1749); translated
into English as Medica Sacra; Or, A Commentary On the most remark-
able Diseases, Mentioned in the Holy Scriptures: To which are prefixed,
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Learned Author . . . , trans.
Thomas Stack (London: Brindley, 1755); and translated into Ger-
man as Abhandlung von den merkwürdigsten Krankheiten, deren in der
heil. Schrift gedacht wird, besonders von den dämonischen Kranken, oder
sogenannten Besessenen und Mondsüchtigen (Leipzig: Böhme, 1777).
(b) Thomas Church, A Vindication of the Miraculous Powers, which subsisted
in the Three First Centuries of the Christian Church. In Answer to Dr.
Middleton’s Free Enquiry. By which it is Shewn, That we have no sufficient
Reason to believe, from the Doctor’s Reasonings and Objections, that no such
Powers were contained in the Church, after the Days of the Apostles, With a
Preface, Containing some Observations on Dr. Mead’s Account of the De-
190
NOTES TO PAGE 106
moniacs, in his New Piece, intituled, Medica Sacra (London: John and
James Rivington, 1750).
(c) Nathaniel Lardner, DD, The Case of the Demoniacs Mentioned in the
New Testament: Four Discourses Upon Mark v. 19: with an appendix for
farther illustrating the Subject (London: J. Buckland, 1758).
(d) Arthur Young, A Dissertation on the Gospel-Daemoniacks (London: G.
Woodfall, 1760).
(e) [Thomas Newton], Dissertation on the Demoniacs in the Gospels (Lon-
don: John and Francis Rivington, 1775).
(f ) John Fell, Daemoniacs. An Enquiry into the Heathen and the Scripture
Doctrine of Daemons. In which the Hypotheses of the Rev. Mr. Farmer, and
others on this subject, are particularly considered (London: Charles Dilly,
1779).
(g) Thomas Barker, The Nature and Circumstances of the Demoniacks in the
Gospels, stated and methodized, and considered in the several particulars
(London: B. White, 1783).
(h) John Fell, The Idolatry of Greece and Rome Distinguished from that of
other Heathen Nations: In a Letter to the Reverend Hugh Farmer (Lon-
don: Charles Dilly, 1785).
Such a lively and continuing controversy did not go unnoticed in Ger-
many, where England often provided the model of advanced learning and
good sense. See Theodor Gerhard Timmermann (M.D. prof. at Rinteln),
Diatribe Antiqvario-Medica de Daemoniacis Evangeliorvm (Rinteln: Ant.
Henr. Boesendahl, 1786), for a good example of the effect of such a steady
exchange of views between Germany and England. In his Diatribe Tim-
mermann showed a heavy dependence upon English authors (especially
Sykes and Mead).
The English also had their own demoniac who underwent a Methodist
‘‘exorcism’’ in 1788, a scandal which prompted a flurry of publications,
among them: A Narrative of the Extraordinary Case of George Lukins, of
Yatton, Somersetshire. Who was possessed of EVIL SPIRITS, for near EIGH-
TEEN YEARS; also an account Of his remarkable Deliverance, in the Vestry
Room of Temple Church, in the City of Bristol. Extracted from the Manuscripts
of several Persons who attended. To which is prefixed a Letter from the Rev.
W. R. W. (n.p., n.d., but preface is signed ‘‘Bristol, June 25, 1788’’); Samuel
Norman, Authentic Anecdotes of George Lukins, the Yatton Daemoniac; with a
View of the Controversy and a Full Refutation of the Imposture (Bristol: Sam.
Johnson, 1788); Joseph Easterbrook, An Appeal to the Public respecting
George Lukins, (Called the Yatton Demoniac,) containing an account of his
191
Affliction and Deliverance; together with a variety of circumstances which tend

to exculpate him from the Charge of Imposture (Bristol: T. Mills, 1788).
67. Hugh Farmer agreed that Satan might be a fallen angel and the inspira-
tion of sin, but he also pointed out that ‘‘satan’’ could also mean ‘‘adver-
sary’’ and thus be applied to human beings as well. Hugh Farmer, An Essay
on the Demoniacs of the New Testament (London: G. Robinson, 1775), pp.
16–20, 77–78, 83, 88; cf. Johann Salomo Semler, ed., Hugo Farmer’s
Briefe an D. Worthington über die Dämonnischen in den Evangelien, new
ed. introduced by Dirk Fleischer (Waltrop: Hartmut Spenner, 2000), pp.
11–12.
68. On Wettstein, ‘‘a martyr to the early Enlightenment,’’ in the polemical
phrase of Hagenbach, see Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 42 (pub-
lished 1897), pp. 251–54. Wettstein’s great New Testament edition was
finally published in 1751–52, two years before his death in 1754. Semler
referred often to the work, while arguing with some of Wettstein’s con-
clusions. In 1764 Semler edited a version of Wettstein’s Prolegomena to
the study of the New Testament (which had first appeared in Amsterdam,
1730): Johann Jakob Wettstein, Prolegomena In Novvm Testamentvm: No-
tas Adiecit Atqve Appendicem De Vetvstioribvs Latinis Recensionibvs Qvae In
Variis Codicibvs Svpersvnt Ioh. Sal. Semler; Cvm Qvibvsdam Charactervm
Graecorvm Et Latinorvm In Libris Manvscriptis Exemplis (Halle: Renger,
1764).
69. The best study of this question is now Dirk Fleischer, in his introduction
to the Versuch einer biblischen Dämonologie, oder Untersuchung der Lehre der
heiligen Schrift vom Teufel und seiner Macht (Halle, 1776), by Otto Justus
Basilius Hesse with an introduction and Anhang by Johann Salomo Sem-
ler (Waltrop: Hartmut Spenner, 1998), esp. pp. xxxiii–xxxiv, lxxiii–lxxxiii.
70. Aner, Theologie der Lessingzeit, pp. 239 ff, citing Ernesti’s Neue Theologische
Bibliothek, vol. 3 (1762), Stück no. 9.
71. The authorship of the Fragments was not finally established before 1814
when Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus donated his father’s full manu-
script to the city library of Hamburg.
72. Günter Gawlick, ‘‘Reimarus und der englische Deismus,’’ in Karlfried
Gründer and Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, eds., Religionskritik und Religiosität
in der deutschen Aufklärung, Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung, vol.
11 (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1989), pp. 43–54; Josef Engert, Der
Deismus in der Religions- und Offenbarungskritik des Hermann Samuel Rei-
marus (Vienna, 1916).
73. Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, ed. Gerhard
192
Alexander, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Insel, 1972), pt. b (New Testament), lib. 1,

cap. 2, 7–8: vol. 2, pp. 54–58; cf. pt. b, lib. 2, cap. 1, 4–5; pt. b, lib. 6,
cap. 1, 8.
74. Apologie, pt. b, lib. 4, cap. 3, 2: vol. 2, pp. 372–75. Belief in miracles was, in
Reimarus’s view, always easy to propagate among simple and superstitious
people: pt. b, lib. IV, cap. 3, 7: vol. 2, pp. 386–87.
75. ‘‘Auf diese Weise ward denn alles bey den damaligen Juden und Christen
übernatürlich; sowohl die Krankheiten, als deren Heilung: und der Teu-
fel konnte in den Zeiten, so wie mit dessen Hülffe auch die falschen
Propheten, abenfals solche Zeichen und Wunder thun, die von den
wahren nicht zu unterscheyden waren, und also auch die auserwehlten
Gläubigen leichte hätten verführen mögen.’’ Apologie pt. b, lib. 4, cap. 3,
2: vol. 2, p. 374.
76. Reimarus here joined the European debate on miracles and echoes sev-
eral of the arguments of David Hume: ‘‘Denn wenn wir die auctores
derselben, gleich, als infallibel und frey von falschen Neigungen, kurtz,
als viros theopneustos annehmen wollten; so kämen wir in einen Cirkel
hinein; ihre Wunder bezögen sich auf ihre Theopneustie, und ihre The-
opneustie wieder auf ihre Wunder, ohne welche kein eintziger Mensch
von menschlichen Fehlern und Schwachheiten frey werden kann.’’ Apolo-
gie, pt. b, lib. 4, cap. 3, 3: vol. 2, p. 376. Even in Reimarus’s own day,
however, it was not always possible to disprove every single supposed
miracle, as the well-attested Jansenist wonders at St. Medard in Paris
showed. Neither the French courts nor the Jesuits had been able to dis-
prove these miracles specifically, but that did not prove them all true.
If one had to believe all the unrefuted accounts of miracles from hea-
then antiquity, there would be no end of contradictory nonsense. ‘‘Wenn
dieses bey so aufgeklärten Zeiten noch so neuerlich geschehen ist: wie viel
leichter hat ein Bericht von so entfernten Zeiten und Völkern eine Sache
in dergleichen Finsterniss verhüllen können, dass man das wahre Factum,
und den Ursprung der Lüge oder des Betruges nicht mehr herausfinden
kann? Dies dienet überhaupt zur Antwort auf alle Wunder des A. und N.
T. wie auch der Kirchen-Geschichte.’’ Apologie, pt. b, lib. 4, cap. 3, 3:
vol. 2, p. 377.
77. Apologie, pt. b, lib. 4, cap. 3, 5; vol. 2, pp. 380–83.
78. In Wilhelm Abraham Teller’s Wörterbuch des Neuen Testaments, published
in 1772, the author accepted Semler’s conclusions about demons but went
beyond Semler to deny the very existence of the devil. He emphasized
that the Hebrew notion of Satan and the devil described an accuser, but
193
that supersitious Jews had extended the notion of the devil until he was
the cause of all evil. In Teller’s view, Jesus came to sweep away the whole
doctrine, and as a result right-thinking Christians saw God as the source
of all good and mankind as his own enemy. Aner, Theologie der Lessingzeit,
p. 242. Similarly Otto Justus Basilius Hesse took off from Semler but
denied the existence of the devil and even his moral influence in his
Versuch einer biblischen Dämonologie, intro. by Dirk Fleischer. The Univer-
sity of Tübingen remained for decades a citadel of traditional teaching on
the devil and demons. See Johann Gottlieb Faber, Disquisitio acad., an
Adaemonismus cum fide et pietate Christiana conciliari possit, praeside Jo.
Gottlieb Faber, . . . Def. Mart. Schuller (Tübingen: Cotta and Reuss,
1763); Johann Gottfried Faber, Dissertatio Academica de Daemoniacis ad-
versus Wetstenium, praeses Ioannes Gottfried Faber . . . Respondens
M. Carolus Fried. Renz, Kirchhemio Teccensis (Tübingen: Cott and
Reuss, 1763); Tobias Gottfried Hegelmaier, Beytrag wider den einreissenden
Adaemonismus in drey Predigten (Tübingen, 1778). Hegelmaier was proba-
bly also the author of the anonymous Sollte der Teufel Durch die Englische
Schrift: Untersuchung vom Satan betitelt, Von dem Uebersetzer und seinem
Notenmacher Herrn Professor Schulz aus Giesen relegirt seyn. Heil ihm! (‘‘Ha-
deln im Land Wursten,’’ ca. 1780); I cite the copy in the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek. M. J. G. Meyer, Historia Diaboli seu commentatio de diab-
oli, malorumque spirituum exsistentia, statibus, iudicis, consiliis, potestate (Tü-
bingen: Reuss, 1777; repr. Tübingen: Cotta, 1780). The Hauptpastor
Melchior Goeze of Hamburg apparently also insisted on the ‘‘necessity of
the doctrine of the devil.’’ Aner, Theologie der Lessingzeit, p. 245, citing
Nicolai’s Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek.
79. Aner, Theologie der Lessingzeit, pp. 245–46.
80. I cite the third edition: [Heinrich Martin Gottfried Köster], Demüthige
Bitte um Belehrung an die grossen Männer, welche keinen Teufel glauben
(‘‘Deutschland’’ [ Giessen], 1775), pp. 3–4.
81. Köster, Demüthige Bitte, pp. 5–6, 9, 16, 18–19, 25, 30, 44–45, 51.
82. [Köster], Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten mit unpartheyischen Anmer-
kungen (Giessen), vol. 1 (1778): ‘‘Von den neuen Streitigkeiten über den
Teufel,’’ pp. 301–18, at pp. 309–12.
83. Demüthigste Antwort eines geringen Landgeistlichen auf die demüthige Bitte
um Belehrung and die grossen Männer, welche keinen Teufel glauben (‘‘In
Deutschland’’ [Frankfurt], 1776), pp. 21, 32–35. Johann Carl Bonnet was
pastor in Niederkirchen in the Ostertal of the Palatinate-Zweibrücken
(1766–1777) and then in Nünschweiler.
194
84. Sollte der Teufel wirklich ein Unding seyn? eine Frage und Bitte an die Theo-
logen unserer Zeit (n.p., 1776), pp. 4, 7–12. I cite the copy in the University
of Augsburg Library.
85. [Conrad H. Runge], Man muss auch dem Teufel nicht zu viel aufbürden. Bey
Gelegenheit der Brochüre: Sollte der teufel wirklich ein Unding sein? etc. (Bre-
men: Johann Heinrich Cramer, 1776), pp. xvii, xxi–xxii (Vorrede), pp.
19–21; 32–52, 75–86, 95–96. On Runge, see Meusel, Lexikon der vom
Jahr 1750 bis 1800 verstorbenen teutschen Schriftsteller (Leipzig, 1811), p.
489. For our purposes Runge’s ongoing involvement with Lavater is of
interest. In 1775 he published Des Herrn Diakonus Lavater’s eigentliche
Meinung von den Gaben des heiligen Geistes, oder Kraft des Gebets, geprüft und
beantwortet von einem Freunde der Wahrheit (Bremen, 1775); with a Fort-
setzung (Bremen, 1777); and Ende (Bremen, 1777).
86. [Heinrich Martin Gottfried Köster], Teufeleyen des achtzehnten Jahrhun-
derts von dem Verfasser der demüthigen Bitte um Belehrung an die grossen
Männer, welche keinen Teufel glauben. Erste rechtmässige Auflage (Leipzig:
Karl Friedrich Schneider, 1778), pp. 21–60.
87. Emmanuel Swedenborgs demuethiges Danksagungsschreiben ab den grossen
Mann, der die Nonexistenz des Teufels demonstrirt hat [by Heinrich Martin
Gottfried Köster] (Frankfurt: Leipzig [Liegnitz: Siegert], 1778); Otto
Justus Basilius Hesse, with Johann Salomo Semler, ed., Versuch einer bibli-
schen Dämonologie, intro. by Dirk Fleischer; see also [Tobias Gottfried
Hegelmaier], Der Teufel unter den Bauern: der Herr sage, was er wolle von
E. S. P (n.p., 1777); [Heinrich Martin Gottfried Köster], Die Verbindung
des Teufels mit den Gespenstern (‘‘Teutschland’’ [Giessen], 1777).
88. Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten, vol. 1 (1778), pp. 612–14.
89. Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten, vol. 1 (1778), pp. 622–27.
90. [ Johann Adam Brandmayer], Theorie von den Würkungen des Teufels,
und von der Gewalt der Kirche wider denselben (Frankfurt and Mainz: Var-
rentrapp, 1777).
91. Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten, vol. 1 (1778), pp. 629–33 [misprinted
as 625–29].
92. Christian Wilhelm Kindleben, Der Teufeleien des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts
letzter Akt. Worinn Emmanuel Schwedenborgs demüthiges Danksagungs-
schreiben beantwortet, der ganze bisher geführte Streit friedlich beygelegt, und in
dem Büchlein über die Nonexistenz des Teufels manches zurückgenommen,
ergänzt und berichtiget wird (Leipzig: Carl Friedrich Schneider, 1779 [the
preface was signed Leipzig, 30 December 1778]); the work he was correct-
ing or retracting was his anonymous Ueber die Non-Existenz des Teufels. Als
195
eine Antwort auf die demütige Bitte um Belehrung an die grossen Männer,
welche keinen Teufel glauben. ‘‘Has fabulas et errores ab imperitis parentibus
discimus, et quod est gravius, ipsius studiis et disciplinis elaboramus’’: Minucius
Felix (Berlin: Gottlieb August Lange, 1776). I have used the copy in the
Stadtbibliothek Feldkirch.
93. Kindleben, Der Teufeleien des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts letzter Akt, pp. ix,
11, 19, 20–23, 35–36.
94. [Köster], Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten, vol. 2 (1779), Stück 7: pp.
557–62.
Chapter 5. Conversation and Ridicule
1. Christoph Deupmann, ‘‘Furor satiricus’’: Verhandlungen über literarische

Aggression im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Studien zur deutschen Literatur,
no. 166 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002), pp. 227–28, in reference to
Karl Wilhelm Ramler. Other figures cited by Deupmann whom time has
treated badly are Johann Franz Buddeus, Johann Burkhard Mencke, Mar-
tinus Möller, Joseph a Virgine Maria, Christoph Selhamer, Johann Lo-
renz von Mosheim, Johann Peter Miller, Christian Weise, Georg Philipp
Harsdörffer, Johann Heinrich Zedler, Johann Georg Walch, Andreas
Rüdiger, Magnus Daniel Omeis, and Albrecht Christian Rotth (pp. 307–
25). See also Maria Tronskaja, Die deutsche Prosasatire der Aufklärung
(Berlin: Rütten and Loening, 1969).
2. For Shaftesbury in Germany, see Christian Friedrich Weiser, Shaftesbury
und das deutsche Geistesleben (Leipzig and Berlin, 1916).
3. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men,
Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), ‘‘Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,’’ pt. 1, sec. 2,
pp. 8, 30. In his essay criticizing Voltaire, Thomas Carlyle claimed, ‘‘We
have, oftener than once, endeavoured to attach some meaning to that
aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which, however, we can find
nowhere in his works, that ‘ridicule is the test of truth’ ’’ (Foreign Review 6,
1829); see Carlyle’s Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, in Collected Works,
34 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1870–87), vol. 7, pp. 183–84. See
R. L. Brett, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: A Study in Eighteenth-Century
Literary Theory (London: Hutchinson House, 1951), pp. 165–85; Stanley
Grean, Shaftesbury’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: A Study in Enthusiasm
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1967), pp. 120–34; Lawrence E. Klein,
196
Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics
in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
4. After long being a topic among students of literature, laughter has re-
cently become a center of scholarly attention in philosophy, theology,
anthropology, and history. See the bibliography provided by Jan Brem-
mer and Herman Roodenburg, eds., A Cultural History of Humour: From
Antiquity to the Present Day (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 1997), pp. 247–
49. For the literary history, see for example Manfred Pfister, A History of
English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2002); Robert Favre, Le rire dans tous ses éclats (Lyon: Presses
universitaires de Lyon, 1995); Anne Richardot, Le rire des Lumières (Paris:
Honoré Champion, 2002), esp. pp. 83–126.
5. Brett, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, pp. 174–75.
6. See for example Georg Friedrich Meier, Gedanken von Schertzen (1744),
ed. Klaus Bohnen (Kopenhagen: Text und Kontext, 1977), esp. pp. x, xvi,
xxviii. Maier (1718–1777) was a professor at the University of Halle.
Bohnen usefully lists works printed between 1706 and 1789 on the topic
of laughter and jokes (pp. 145–48).
7. Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of
Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
8. Martin Gierl, ‘‘ ‘The Triumph of Truth and Innocence’: The Rules and
Practice of Theological Polemics,’’ in Peter Becker and William Clark,
eds., Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic
Practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 35–66.
9. James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 94, citing Rudolf
Jentzsch, Der deutsch-lateinische Büchermarkt nach den Leipziger Ostermesse-
Katalogen von 1740, 1770, und 1800 in seiner Gliederung und Wandlung
(Leipzig, 1912), table 2. Erich Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit oder Die
Verwandlung des Lesens: Mentalitätswandel um 1800 (Stuttgart, 1987), p. 44.
10. Jentzsch, Der deutsch-lateinische Büchermarkt, p. 333; Engelsing, Analpha-
betentum und Lektüre. Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in Deutschland zwischen
feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1973), p. 53. As Erich
Schön points out, the numbers of titles listed in the Frankfurt and Leipzig
fair catalogues do not correspond perfectly to the books actually pub-
lished, and not even to the books produced by the publishers who listed
their books there. Many, perhaps half, of the books advertised in the
197
seventeenth century were merely proposed and never published. Erich

Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit, Oder Die Verwandlungen des Lesers.
Mentalitätswandel um 1800 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), p. 38.
11. Rolf Engelsing, ‘‘Die Perioden der Lesergeschichte in der Neuzeit,’’ Ar-
chiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 10 (1970), p. 966; Engelsing, Analphabe-
tentum und Lektüre; Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe,
pp. 89–92.
12. Richard van Dülmen, Kultur und Alltag in der Frühen Neuzeit, vol. 3:
Religion, Magie, Aufklärung 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1994), p.
242, citing Reinhard Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels. Ein
Überblick (Munich, 1991), p. 111. See also Albert Ward, Book Production,
Fiction, and the German Reading Public, 1740–1800 (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
13. Helmuth Kiesel and Paul Münch, Gesellschaft und Literatur im 18. Jahr-
hundert: Voraussetzungen und Entstehung des literarischen Markts in Deutsch-
land (Munich: Beck, 1977); Ernst Fischer, Der Buchmarkt der Goethezeit.
Eine Dokumentation, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1986), vol. 2,
p. 428.
14. Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lektüre, p. 57; ‘‘Über den schlechten
Bücherdruck in Deutschland,’’ in Journal von und für Deutschland (1785),
St. 2, p. 546.
15. ‘‘Ueber die Ursachen der jetzigen Vielschreiberey in Deutschland,’’ in
Journal von und für Deutschland (1790), St. 4, pp. 324–26; reprinted in
Fischer, Der Buchmarkt der Goethezeit, vol. 2, pp. 99–101. Cf. ‘‘Schrei-
ben an einen Freund über die Ursachen der jetzigen Vielschreiberey in
Deutschland,’’ in Journal von und für Deutschland (1789), St. 2, pp. 139–
43; reprinted in Fischer, Der Buchmarkt der Goethezeit, vol. 2, pp. 93–98.
16. Van Dülmen, Kultur und Alltag in der Frühen Neuzeit, vol. 3, p. 242.
17. Paul Raabe, ‘‘Die Zeitschrift als Medium der Aufklärung,’’ in Bücherlust
und Lesefreuden. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Buchwesens im 18. und frühen
19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1984), pp. 105–16, 293–94.
19. Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lektüre, p. 61.
20. Van Dülmen, Kultur und Alltag in der Frühen Neuzeit, vol. 3, p. 245, citing
Joachim Kirchner, Die Grundlagen des deutschen Zeitschriftenwesens. Mit
einer Gesamtbibliographie der deutschen Zeitschriften bis zum Jahre 1790,
2 vols. (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1928–31).
21. Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lektüre, pp. 59–60.
22. Jörn Göres and Hartmut Schmidt, eds., Lesewuth, Raubdruck und Bücher-
198
luxus: Das Buch in der Goethe-Zeit (Düsseldorf: Goethe Museum, 1977);

D. von König, ‘‘Lesesucht und Lesewut,’’ in Herbert G. Göpfert, ed.,
Buch und Leser: Vorträge des. 1. Jahrestreffens des Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreises
für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 13. u. 14. Mai 1976 (Hamburg: Hauswedell,
1977), pp. 89–124; Hermann Bausinger, ‘‘Aufklärung und Lesewut,’’ in
Württembergisch Franken 64 (1980), 178–95; Günter Erning, Das Lesen
und die Lesewut. Beiträge zu Fragen der Lesergeschichte dargestellt am Beispiel
der schwäbischen Provinz (Bad Heilbrunn: Julius Klinkhardt, 1974); Hel-
mut Kreuzer, ‘‘Gefährliche Lesesucht: Bemerkungen zu politischer Lek-
türekritik im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert,’’ in Leser und Lesen im 18.
Jahrhundert. Colloquium der Arbeitsstelle Achtzehntes Jahrhundert, Gesamt-
hochschule Wuppertal (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977), pp. 62–75.
24. Alberto Martino, Die deutsche Leihbibliothek. Geschichte einer literarischen
Institution, 1756–1914 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990), pp. 14–
29.
25. See for example Martin Neubauer, Indikation and Katalyse. Funktionsana-
lytische Studien zum Lesen in der deutschen Literatur des ausgehenden 18.
Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1991).
26. Sophia Rosenfeld, ‘‘Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitan-
ism, Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Eu-
rope,’’ National Identities 4 (2002), pp. 25–43.
27. Frage, ob der Katechismus von der Geisterlehre ein katholischer Kathechismus
sey?
28. Sendschreiben des HR von . . . an den Herrn HR von . . . Mitglied der Chur-
bayerischen Akademie in München über einige von dem Herrn Gasner, ge-
wessten Pfarrer in Clösterle, während seines Aufenthalts in Ellwangen unter-
nommene Operationen.
29. Die Sympathie, ein Universalmittel wider alle Teufeleyen, zum Behufe der
neuen Philosophie und der alten Religion.
30. Francisco dell’Amavero, Untersuchung, ob es eine Vestigkeit gebe.
31. Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren.
32. Die Aufgedeckten Sterzingerischen Lügen, Keckheit, und Unwissenheit.
33. Aufrichtige Erklärung eines Geistlichen gegen einen Seelsorger über die gass-
nerischen Kuren.
34. Ausführliche Beschreibung jener merkwürdigen Begebenheit, die sich mit einer
gewissen jungen Klosterfrau Maria Anna Oberhueberin.
35. Beyträge zu Gassners Aufenthalt und Weesen in Sulzbach. Allda gedruckt mit
Galwitzischen Schriften.
199
36. Betrügende Zauberkunst und träumende Hexerey oder Vertheidigung der aka-
demischen Rede von dem gemeinen Vorurtheile der wirkenden und thätigen
Hexerei.
37. Beurtheilung der Gassnerischen Wunderkuren, von einem Seelsorger und
Eiferer für die Catholische Religion.
38. Blocksberger, Glückwünschungsschreibung an . . . A. März, über seine Ver-
theidigung der Hex- und Zauberey.
39. Briefe eines Frauenzimmers an einen ihrer Freunde, die gassnerischen Wun-
derkuren betreffend.
40. For the rules of modesty, see Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct
and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995), pp. 158–63.
41. Demütige Bitte um Belehrung an die grossen Männer, welche keinen Teufel
glauben.
42. Demüthigste Antwort eines geringen Landgeistlichen Auf die demüthige Bitte
u.s.f. Mit Anmerkungen.
43. Teufeleyen des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, von dem Verfasser der demüthigen
Bitte (Leipzig, 1778).
44. Belehrung des Verfassers der demütigen Bitte an die grossen Männer, welche
keinen Teufel glauben.
45. Des geringen Landgeistlichen Antwort auf die Belehrung des Verfassers der
demüthigen Bitte an die grossen Männer, welche keinen Teufel glauben (au. = J.
Bonnet, Frankfurt a.M., 1777).
46. Demüthiges Danksagungsschreiben an den grossen Mann, der die Nonexistenz
des Teufels demonstrirt hat (Frankfurt and Leipzig, actually Liegnitz: Sie-
gert, 1778).
47. Die aufgedeckten Gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Aus authentischen Urkunden
beleuchtet und durch Augenzeugen bewiesen (n.p., 1775), pp. 21–22.
48. ‘‘Aber weil Herr Gassner aus Demuth kein Wundermann seyn will: so
wird er auch aus Demuth von Titulaturen kein Freund seyn.’’ Beurthei-
lung der Gassnerischen Wunderkuren, von einem Seelsorger und Eiferer für die
Catholische Religion (n.p., 1775) (from the ‘‘Avertissement’’ at the end).
49. Sendschreiben des Wohlehrwürdigen F. Don Placidus Suadens, Theatiner Ordens
in Prag, an den Hochwürdigen Herrn Gassner, Bischöflich-Regensburgischen
geistlichen Rath und Hof-Caplan (Prague, 1775), p. 15.
50. An den unglücklichen Aufdecker der gassnerischen Wunderkuren (n.p., 1775),
p. 8.
51. Deutsche Chronik, Bd. 2, St. 37 (8 May 1775), pp. 291–94. Schubart was
commenting on Memmingen Pastor Johann G. Schelhorn’s anonymous
200
tract Von des Wunderthäter Gassners. . . . Unterricht wider den Teufel zu

streiten. Auszug aus einem Brief eines Schwaben an einen Niedersächsischen
Gelehrten. Dem scharfsinnigen . . . Sterzinger gewiedmet (Frankfurt, 1775).
Schubart noted approvingly the modest tones that seemed appropriate to
the truth, and set them in contrast to one of Gassner’s own tracts, which
was ‘‘eine seichte, elende, einfältige, unphilosophische, der Naturlehre
und dem Christenthum widersprechende, ja gar gotteslästerliche Schrift’’
(p. 292).
Herrn Gassners in Ellwangen, herausgegeben von Doct. Schisel, gedruckt zu
Schalbuz, mit Wizgallischen Schriften, 1775.
53. Friedrich Nicolai’s Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, vol. 24 (1775), p. 619,
noted that ‘‘Francisco dell’Amavero’s’’ Untersuchung, ob es eine Vestigkeit
gebe . . . 1774 was either by Sterzinger or by someone who wrote as he did.
54. Sollte der Teufel wirklich ein Unding seyn? eine Frage und Bitte an die Theo-
logen unserer Zeit (n.p., 1776), p. 24.
55. [Conrad H. Runge], Man muss auch dem Teufel nicht zu viel aufbürden. Bey
Gelegenheit der Brochüre: Sollte der teufel wirklich ein Unding sein? (Bremen,
bey Johann Heinrich Cramer, 1776), Vorrede.
56. ‘‘diese Ungebühr pro praeterito ernstlich zu verweisen, pro futuro aber
scharf zu verbieten und das gänzliche Stillschweigen aufzutragen.’’ Cited
in Hanauer, ‘‘Der Teufelsbanner und wunderheiler Johann Joseph Gas-
sner,’’ p. 437. The Churbaierische Intelligenzblätter für das Jahr 1775, Blatt
for 1 April 1775 (no. 5 for the year) announced that the elector of Bavaria
had proclaimed a ‘‘Verordnung’’ against forbidden and nasty religious
discussions, dated 13 February 1775. The Obrigkeiten everywhere are to
punish without respect of persons any ridicule of the Catholic faith or
personnel, whether in fun or in earnest (p. 53).
57. Friedrich Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die
Schweiz im Jahre 1781, vol. 7 (Berlin and Stettin: Nicolai, 1786), p. 101. I
have used the photo-mechanical reproduction edited by Bernhard Fabian
and Marie-Luise Spieckermann, Friedrich Nicolai, Gesammelte Werke (Hil-
desheim: Olms, 1994), vol. 18.
58. Hans Krauss, ed., Deutsche Chronik, herausgegeben von Christian Friedrich
Daniel Schubart, Jahrgang 1774–Jahrgang 1777 (Heidelberg: Lambert
Schneider, 1975). Krauss provides a most informative Nachwort in vol. 4,
Anhang, pp. l–lxviii. See also Michael Myers, ‘‘Für den Bürger.’’ The Role of
Christian Schubart’s ‘‘Deutsche Chronik’’ in the Development of a Political
Public Sphere (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); and Stadtbibliothek Ulm,
201
ed., Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart bis zu seiner Gefangensetzung 1777.

Ausstellung aus Anlass seines 250. Geburtstages (Ulm: Stadtbibliothek,
1989), pp. 112–27, 137–46.
59. North German journalists tended to side with England when they took
notice of the American rebellion at all.
60. On censorship in Augsburg after the Reformation see Allyson Creasman,
‘‘Policing the Word: The Control of Print and Public Expression in Early
Modern Augsburg, 1520–1648,’’ Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Vir-
ginia, 2002; Myers, ‘‘Für den Bürger,’’ p. 219; Etienne François, Die un-
sichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, 1648 - 1806
(Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1991).
61. G. Costa, Die Rechtseinrichtung der Zensur in der Reichsstadt Augsburg
(Augsburg, 1916), pp. 37–38; Hans-Jörg Künast, ‘‘Getruckt zu Augspurg’’:
Buchdruck und Buchhandel in Augsburg zwischen 1468 und 1555 (Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1997). The dissolution of the Jesuits was so recent that by the
spring of 1774 the authorities in Augsburg had not yet decided to publish
or implement the papal order (Myers, ‘‘Für den Bürger,’’ p. 223).
62. Myers, ’’Für den Bürger,’’ p. 222.
63. Konrad Gaiser, ‘‘Schubart im Exorzistenstreit,’’ Euphorion. Zeitschrift für
Literaturgeschichte, ed. Josef Nadler, August Sauer, and Georg Stefansky,
vol. 29, no. 1 (Stuttgart, 1927), pp. 564–95. Schubart read and distributed
as many of the works of the Gassner controversy as he could. On 18 May
1775, for example, he sent his brother Conrad a packet of ‘‘Gassnerian
writings, pro and contra.’’ Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Briefe,
ed. Ursula Wertheim and Hans Böhm (Munich: Beck, 1984), p. 147.
64. The circumstances and reasons for his arrest have remained somewhat
murky. Myers summarizes the evidence in ‘‘Für den Bürger,’’ pp. 248–55,
265–68. It does appear clear enough that Duke Karl Eugen could not
stand Schubart’s irreverance and insolent attitude toward all princes. For
the brutal letter from the duke ordering Schubart’s arrest, see Christian
Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Briefe, ed. Ursula Wertheim and Hans Böhm
(Munich: Beck, 1984), pp. 339–40. The outraged duke claimed that im-
prisoning Schubart would ‘‘purify human society of this unworthy and
infective member.’’ See also the documents dated 24 January–27 March
1777 reprinted in ibid., pp. 341–48.
65. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Leben und Gesinnung (von ihm selbst
im Kerker aufgesetzt), 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Mäntlern, 1791–93), ed. Ludwig
Schubart, pp. 48–49. ‘‘Ich beging gleich Anfangs die Unvorsichtigkeit
(eine Furie, die mich immer geisselte) den gefallenen Jesuiten-Orden
202
anzugreifen [ . . . ] Ein Stein zu meinen Kerkergewölbe!—Gleich darauf

mischte ich mich in Gassners Sache; der zweite Stein zu meinen Kerker-
gewölbe!’’ Schubart had already connected these two ‘‘stones’’ in his mind
while he was in prison. See, for example, the rather hopeless letter he
composed to the Emperor Joseph II (to be sent by his mother, imper-
sonating her voice) asking for his release: ‘‘To be sure, his fire sometimes
overcame him, so that he struck a string too harshly, so that it resounded
roughly in many an ear. Gassner’s well-known exorcisms and the sus-
pended Jesuit Order that defended them brought him many a hot per-
secution.’’ Draft of a petition to Emperor Joseph II, 5 October 1783,
Schubart, Briefe, p. 195.
66. Myers, ‘‘Für den Bürger,’’ pp. 117–23, 250–54. Myers points out, for
example that Schubart had ridiculed the duke for being the ‘‘father of his
country in the literal sense,’’ in view of Karl Eugen’s huge number of
illegitimate children (p. 118).
67. Antwort auf den aus einem Brief eines Schwaben an einen Niedersächsischen
Gelehrten gemachten Auszug von des Hrn. Gassners, Pfarrers in dem Klösterle,
Unterricht wieder den Teufel zu streiten. CUM LICENTIA SUPERIO-
RUM (Kempten: Aloys Galler, 1775), p. 18.
68. Kurze Verzeichniss einiger Schnapphanen jetziger Zeit bei den Gassnerischen
Begebenheiten zu Ellwangen; nebst einer Sammlung deren sowohl für, als wider
Herrn Gassner herausgekommenen Schriften, 1775. Gedruckt in eben die-
sem Jahr.
69. Der nach aller Möglichkeit entschuldigte Herr P. Don Ferdinand Sterzinger in
Betreff der aufgedeckten gassnerischen Wunderkuren. Von einem Freunde
sowohl des Hrn. geistlichen Raths Gassner als des Hrn. P. Sterzingers, in den
Druck gegeben (‘‘Sterzing,’’ 1775), pp. 37–39, 45–50n. Hanauer identifies
the author as Alois Merz.
70. Hannswurst und Schubart. Ein Lustspiel, aufgeführt von dem Verfasser der
Sympathie, zum Vergnügen der Schwaben./ Wann hören wir doch einmal auf
Schwabenstreiche zu machen? Schubarts Chronik 74. Stück, vorigen Jahrs,
1775, 65 pages. The title page has a comical printer’s device with a man
beset by two satyrs, while a third sits and reads. Hanauer lists the ‘‘Ex-
jesuit Zeiler von Augsburg’’ as the author. Michael Myers (’’Für den Bür-
ger,’’ p. 228) reports that no copies of this comedy survive, but I have
found copies listed in the library catalogues of the University of Tü-
bingen, the University of Augsburg, the Leopold-Sophien-Bibliothek
Überlingen, the Evangelisches Stift Tübingen, the Württembergische
Landesbibliothek, the Staatliche Bibliothek Regensburg, the Nieder-
203
sächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, the Univer-

sitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt in Halle, the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek in Munich, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and in the
Staats- und Stadtbibliothek of Augsburg.
71. Most libraries with this title attribute it to Zeiler, but some catalogue
entries found in the online Karlsruhe Virtueller Katalog (www.ubka.uni-
karlsruhe.de/kvk.html) suggest that the author was the well-known Ba-
varian intellectual Ferdinand Maria Baader.
72. Die Sympathie, ein Universalmittel wider alle Teufeleyen, zum Behufe der
neuen Philosophie und der alten Religion, 1. u. 2. Aufl. (‘‘Sterzingen in Tyrol,’’
1775), ‘‘Verlegens Niemand und Fragenicht.’’ University of Tübingen,
2nd ed., ‘‘vermehrte.’’ A manuscript note in the Munich exemplar at-
tributes this book thus: ‘‘Zeiller, Exjesuita, alli Savonarollam Exjesuitam
esse credunt.’’ Other librarians and bibliographers have supposed that
Gassner himself was the author.
73. In Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, vol. 27 (1776), pp. 594–95, Nicolai spe-
cifically praised Schubart’s amusing writing and unusually good German
style, especially considering its origins. He was less impressed with Schu-
bart’s poetry, however, and rejected his epigrams as coarse (‘‘gar plump’’).
74. We now know that in the case of Gassner, his informant was Johann
Heinrich Braun, a journalist and former Benedictine monk living in Mu-
nich. Michael Schaich, Staat und Öffentlichkeit im Kurfürstentum Bayern
der Spätaufklärung (Munich: Beck, 2001), pp. 17–18, citing letters from
Braun to Nicolai on 30 December 1774, 6 May 1775, 12 October 1775,
and 20 January 1776 in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Nachlass Nicolai, Bd. 8.
75. See, for example, the thoughtful revision by Paul Raabe of the value of
such works in ‘‘Johann Georg Meusels Schriftstellerlexikon,’’ in his
Bücherlust und Lesefreuden. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Buchwesens im 18.
und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1984), pp. 117–39,
294–300; and more generally his chapter ‘‘Gelehrte Nachschlagewerke
im 18. Jahrhundert,’’ pp. 89–105, 291–93.
76. Zapf, Zauberbibliothek.
77. Johann Heinrich Beutler and Johann Christoph Guts-Muths, Allgemeines
Sachregister über die wichtigsten deutschen Zeit- und Wochenschriften, 2 vols.
(Leipzig: Weygand, 1790; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1976). It was quickly
followed by Johann Samuel Ersch, Repertorium über die allgemeinern [sic]
deutschen Journale und andere periodische Sammlungen für Erdbeschreibung,
Geschichte, und die damit verwandten Wissenschaften, 3 vols. (Lemgo:
204
Meyer, 1790–92), and by Johann Georg Meusel, Leitfaden zur Geschichte

der Gelehrsamkeit (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1799–1800). The modern successor
is the massive index by Klaus Schmidt et al., eds., Index deutschsprachiger
Zeitschriften 1750–1815, 10 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997).
78. Beutler and Guts-Muths, Allgemeines Sachregister, vol. 1, p. 114, criticiz-
ing the Journal für Freunde der Religion und Litteratur, vol. 1 (Augsburg:
[Bartl,] 1779).
79. Beutler and Guts-Muths, Allgemeines Sachregister, vol. 1, pp. 104–5, criti-
cizing the Antipapistisches Journal, oder der unpartheyische Lutheraner. Her-
ausgegeben von M. Fer. Amb. Fidler, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1770).
80. One can follow other contours of the discussion through the work of the
Göttinger Arbeitsstelle, Klaus Schmidt et al., eds., Index deutschsprachiger
Zeitschriften 1750–1815 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997).
81. Goldgar, Impolite Learning, pp. 205, 236, 240, 250.
82. F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan, 2003).
83. Quentin Skinner explains the classical and Renaissance tradition of us-
ing laughter as a means of moving audiences when mere reason might
adduce good reasons on both sides of a controverted issue; see ‘‘Why
Does Laughter Matter to Philosophy,’’ The Passmore Lecture, Australian
National University (Canberra), December 2000, pp. 4–13. Available at
http://socpol.anu.edu.au/pdf-files/passmorelect2000.pdf.
84. Indeed, the dangers of laughter as impolite or uncivil led to early modern
attacks upon laughter as boorish, gross, and disagreeable. By 1748 Lord
Chesterfield could admonish his son to avoid even giggles as ‘‘low and
unbecoming.’’ There was ‘‘nothing so illiberal and so ill bred, as audible
laughter.’’ Quoted in Skinner, ‘‘Why Does Laughter Matter to Philoso-
phy?’’ p. 17. See also Michael A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross
(New York: Penguin, 1997); Daniel Ménager, La renaissance et le rire
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995); and Keith Thomas, ‘‘The
Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England,’’ Times Literary Supple-
ment, 21 January 1977, pp. 77–81.
85. Buckley, Morality of Laughter, pp. 186–90.
86. Friedrich Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise, vol. 7, Anhang, p. 130. Nicolai
argued that Protestants grew up with fewer prejudices.
87. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise, vol. 7, Anhang, p. 131.
88. Oeffentliche Anzeige und Beschwerde an das Publicum gegen den Frankfurter
Journalisten (Mannheim, 1775). The Frankfurter journalist was attacked
as a denier of religion, a fool, an insulter of the human race. Really, the
205
anonymous complaint continued, we expected better from Mannheim in

the year 1775.
89. Ehrenrettung des S. T. wohlehrwürdigen Herrn Johann Joseph Gassners und
seiner in Teutschland soviel Aufsehens machenden Teufelsbeschwörungen und
geistlichen Kuren zu Ellwangen wider die unverschämte Lästerungen eines
ehrlosen Zeitungsschreibers, und seiner Helfershelfer. / [small print:] Diese aber
lästern alles, was sie nicht verstehen. Im Briefe Judas, Vers 10 (n.p., 1775).
90. [ Joseph Edler von Sartori], Der entlarvte Lügner, Durch Anmerkungen
Ueber Prüfende Anmerkungen zu dem Sendschreiben des H. Hr. von ——— an
den H. Hr——— Mitglied der Churbayerischen Akademie in München; über
einige von dem Herrn Gassner, Pfarrer in Klösterle, während seines Aufenthalts
in Ellwangen unternommene Operationen. Dargestellt von einem Wahrheits-
freund und Augenzeugen, 1775.
91. [Sartori], Der entlarvte Lügner, pp. 43–45.
92. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and
Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). See also the able
discussion and interpretation of James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the
Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
93. Friedrich Nicolai noticed the rage of Catholic imperial officials when
Pastor Melchior Goeze of Hamburg undertook to castigate Catholic
prayer as useless; Beschreibung einer Reise, vol. 7, pp. 115–17.
94. Cass R. Sunstein, Why Societies Need Dissent (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2003), p. 212. I owe this reference to Sophie Rosenfeld.
95. Carlyle, ‘‘Voltaire,’’ Collected Works, 34 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall,
1870–87), vol. 7, p. 184.
Epilogue
1. Friedrich Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die

Schweiz im Jahre 1781, vol. 5 (Berlin and Stettin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1785),
Beylag no. 13.4a, pp. 19–22, at p. 22. I have used the reprint edited by
Bernhard Fabian and Marie-Luise Spieckermann, Gesammelte Werke
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1994), in which the Beschreibung is vols. 15–20, here
vol. 17. This blessing could be translated roughly as follows: ‘‘In order to
discern if someone is tormented by unclean spirits. In the name of the
Father, and the Son, & the Holy † Ghost. Amen. . . . [here follow twenty-
one names for and attributes of the Lord]. Jesus Christ conquers † Christ
206
rules † Christ commands † If the Devil has bound and attacked you,
[Name], in his performance, through his works, Christ the Son of the
living God, who came from heaven and was made flesh in the womb of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, the cause of human salvation, will free you through
His mercy from all unclean spirits. May He cast the devil and every evil
spirit out into the depths of hell and into the abyss. Behold the Cross of the
Lord and flee to another place. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of
David, has conquered. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.’’
2. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise, vol. 5, p. 65, and Beylage 13.4b., pp. 23–
25; Beylage 13.13, pp. 57–59.
3. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise, vol. 6, Beylage 1.3, pp. 63–75. For the
identification of ‘‘Grinaigl’’ as a green-eyed straw fly, I am much indebted
to Professor Heide Dienst of Vienna. See also Grimm, Deutsches Wörter-
buch, vol. 9 (1935), col. 665.
4. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise, vol. 6, pp. 733–34n.
5. Anmerkungen über den Teufel zu Seefeld in Tirol verfasst von einem geistlichen
Ganser [Gassner] der Ex-Klarisserinnen (auf Unkosten der St. Monica-
bruderschaft in Seefeld, 1783), pp. 5, 32–33, 48, 77–79.
6. Willibald Gross [pseud.], Sonder- und wunderbare, doch wahre Geschichte,
wie der Teufel ††† sich einmal in der leiblichen Gestalt eines Esels auf dem
Rathhause zu B———r [= Bottwar?] im W—b—g—schen [Württembergi-
schen] sehen liess; Zu Frommen und Besserung der izigen, höchst unglaubigen
Welt, auch zum Beweiss des, in unsern Tagen so sehr geläugneten Daseyns eines
Teufels ††† in Reimen, nach der bekannten Melodie: Ein Ritter, wie die Chronick
sagt, ed. Paul Weisshammer [pseud.] (Seefeld, 1786).
7. Joseph Weber, Ungrund des Hexen- und Gespenster-glaubens, in ökonomi-
schen Lehrstunden dargestellt (Dillingen: Bernhard Kälin, 1787), pp. v–vii.
8. [Franz Joseph Schmid], Ueber die Hexenreformation des Herrn Professor
Weber in Dillingen (Augsburg, 1787), pp. 3, 9, 16–19. He explicitly in-
voked the memory of Gassner in his defense and contemptuously rejected
the laughter of the Enlightened (p. 48n). Weber replied with Die Nich-
tigkeit der Zauberey, eine Vorlesung, ed. Hübner (Salzburg, 1787); and
Schmid returned fire with a second expanded edition of his Ueber die
Hexenreformation, with a Nachschrift des katholischen Weltmannes zur zwoten
Auflage seiner Piece. über die Hexenreformation des Herrn Professor Weber zu
Dilingen (Augsburg, 1787), and with Des katholischen Weltmanns Erör-
terung der Professor Weberschen Erklärung ans Publikum, die Hexenreforma-
tion betreffend (Augsburg, 1788), along with a more massive declaration,
Und der Satz: Teuflische Magie existirt, bestehet noch: In einer Antwort des
207
katholischen Weltmannes auf die von einem Herrn Landpfarrer herausgegebene

Apologie der ProfessorWeberschen Hexenreformation (Augsburg: Styx, 1791).
By then the self-proclaimedly Enlightened had moved on beyond the
specific Scriptural and demonological issues surrounding Gassner and
were ducking charges that they had provoked the French Revolution.
9. Manfred Eder, ‘‘Teufelsglaube, ‘Besessenheit’ und Exorzismus in Deg-
gendorf, 1785–1791,’’ Beiträge zur Geschichte des Bistums Regensburg 26
(1992), pp. 295–321; Nils Freytag, ‘‘Exorzismus und Wunderglaube im
späten 18. Jahrhundert. Reaktionen auf die Teufelsbanner und Wunder-
heiler J. J. Gassner und A. Knoerzer,’’ in Edwin Dillmann, ed., Regionales
Prisma der Vergangenheit (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 1996),
pp. 89–105; Dominik Burkard, ‘‘Die Prophetin von Weissenau und die
‘andere Revolution.’ Milieus und Mentalitäten im katholischen Oberland
um 1848. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Klärung des Verhältnisses von Re-
ligion und Revolution,’’ Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte 20
(2001), pp. 211–37, for the case of a woman in 1848 from whom Father
Patriz Seibold cast out demons publicly.
10. Nils Freytag, ‘‘Aberglauben, Krankheit und das Böse. Exorzismus und
Teufelsglaube im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,’’ Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeit-
schrift für Volkskunde 44 (1999), pp. 67–93; Freytag, Aberglauben im 19.
Jahrhundert. Preussen und seine Rheinprovinz zwischen Tradition und Mod-
erne, 1815–1918 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2003); Freytag, ‘‘Wun-
derglauben und Aberglauben. Wallfahrten und Prozessionen im Bistum
Trier im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,’’ in Martin Persch, Michael Embach,
and Peter Dohms, eds., 500 Jahre Wallfahrtskirche Klausen (Mainz: Ge-
sellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 2003), pp. 261–82.
11. Hans Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik. Bayerns Beitrag zur deutschen Geistes-
geschichte, 1765–1785 (Munich: Beck, 1968).
12. Grassl, Aufbruch, p. 424.
13. Otto-Joachim Grüsser, Justinus Kerner, 1786–1862: Arzt, Poet, Geister-
seher: nebst Anmerkungen zum Uhland-Kerner-Kreis und zur Medizin- und
Geistesgeschichte im Zeitalter der Romantik (Berlin: Springer, 1987), pp.
201–44; Uwe Henrik Peters, Studies in German Romantic Psychiatry: Jus-
tinus Kerner as a Psychiatric Practitioner, E. T. A. Hoffmann as a Psychiatric
Theorist (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London,
1990).
14. Kerner published often on these themes. See his Die Seherin von Prevorst
(1829; translated into English as The Seeress of Prevorst, 1845); Geschich-
ten Besessener neuerer Zeit. Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete kakodämonisch-
208
magnetischer Erscheinungen (1834); Nachricht von dem Vorkommen des Be-

sessenseyns, eines dämonisch-magnetischen Leidens und seiner schon im Altertum
bakannten Heilung durch magisch-magnetisches Einwirken, in einem Send-
schreiben an den Herrn Obermedizinalrath Dr. Schelling in Stuttgart (1836);
Die somnambülen Tische: Zur Geschichte und Erklärung dieser Erscheinung
(1853); and his editorial work on Blätter aus Prevorst, 12 vols. (1831–39);
Magikon: Archiv für Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete der Geisterkunde und des
magnetischen und magischen Lebens, 5 vols. (1840–53); and Franz Anton
Mesmer aus Schwaben (1856).
15. Grassl, Aufbruch, pp. 425–29.
16. Hartmut Lehmann, ‘‘Neupietismus und Säkularisierung: Beobachtungen
zum sozialen Umfeld und politischen Hintergrund von Erweckungsbe-
wegung und Gemeinschaftsbewegung,’’ Pietismus und Neuzeit. Ein Jahr-
buch zur Geschichte des neueren Protestantismus, vol. 15 (Göttingen: Van-
denhoek and Ruprecht, 1989), pp. 40–58; Dieter Lange, Eine Bewegung
bricht sich Bahn. Die deutschen Gemeinschaften im ausgehenden 19. und begin-
nenden 20. Jahrhundert und ihre Stellung zu Kirche, Theologie und Pfingst-
bewegung (Giessen: Brunnen, 1979); Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil:
Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 1999), pp. 44–53.
17. Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Die Krankheitsgeschichte der Gottliebin Dit-
tus (1850; ed. Gerhard Schäfer, Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht,
1978), p. 58, as quoted in Meyer, Translating the Devil, p. 48; see also Mi-
chael Schulz, Johann Christoph Blumhardt: Leben-Theologie-Verkündigung
(Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 1984); Frank D. Macchia, Spiri-
tuality and Social Liberation: The Message of the Blumharts in the Light of
Wuerttemberg Pietism (Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1993).
18. Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century
Prussia, trans. Frank Jellinek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1974). This spiritualist enthusiasm is the current research project of
Yvonne Wübben (’’Geisterseherei in Berlin in der Regierungszeit Frie-
drich Wilhelm II.’’) as part of AG [Arbeitsgruppe] ‘‘Berliner Klassik. Eine
Grossstadtkultur um 1800,’’ a project of the Berlin-Brandenburgische
Akademie der Wissenschaften; see her ‘‘Von ‘Geistersehern und Prose-
lyten.’ Zum politischen Kontext einer Kontroverse in der Berlinischen
Monatsschrift, 1783–1788,’’ in Ursula Goldenbaum and Alexander Ko-
senina, eds., Berliner Aufklärung. Kulturwissenschaftliche Studien, vol. 2
(Hannover-Latzen: Wehrhahn, 2003), pp. 189–220.
19. Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton
209
NOTES TO PAGE 148
University Press, 1966), pp. 87–104; Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik, pp.
173–292.
20. Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik, p. 265; Fritz Valjavec, Die Entstehung
der politischen Strömungen in Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1951),
p. 292.
21. Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik, pp. 432–40; Epstein, Genesis, pp. 674–75;
Behringer, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern: Volksmagie, Glaubenseifer und Staats-
räson in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1987), p. 396. Darrin M.
McMahon goes further, arguing that the Counter-Enlightenment itself
embodied elements of modernity; see Enemies of the Enlightenment: The
French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2001), pp. 197–203.
22. Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik, p. 287; Epstein, Genesis, p. 607.
23. Burkhard Peter, ‘‘Hypnotische Selbstkontrolle: Die wirksame Psycho-
therapie des Teufelsbanners Johann Joseph Gassner um 1775,’’ Hypnose
und Kognition 17 (2000), pp. 19–34.
210
INDEX
abbeys, exempt, 159 n. 10 Basel, Council of (1438), 40

Aepinus, Franz Ulrich Theodo- Bavaria, electorate of, 39, 43–44,
sius, 19 49
Alberti, Alessandro, a Rocha, 56 Romanticism and, 146
Alto Adige, 144 see also Karl Theodor, elector of
Altona, 88 Bavaria; Maximilian III
Amberg, 15 Joseph, elector of Bavaria
Anhalt-Dessau, 88 Bavarian Academy of Sciences, 15,
animal magnetism, 2, 59, 146 18–19, 69, 94–95
revival of, 155 n. 18 Bavarian ‘‘witchcraft war’’ (1760s),
anonymity, 125–27 6–7, 15, 73, 94–95, 100, 183
Anterior Austria (Vorderöster- n. 24
reich), 39, 45, 49 Bayle, Pierre, 16
Aquinas, Thomas, 29 Beales, Derek, 42
Aretin, Karl Otmar von, 40 Becker, Rudolf Zacharias, 124
Augsburg, 28, 98–100, 123, 131– Behringer, Wolfgang, 6, 95
33, 135, 145, 147, 186 n. 35 Bekker, Balthasar, 107, 110, 114
Augsburg, bishop of, 1, 38, 43–44, Benedictine Order, 9
49 Berlin, 88, 123, 133, 143, 147
see also Klemens Wenzeslaus, Beutler, Johann Heinrich, 136–37
duke of Saxony Biblical criticism, 92–94
Austria, 5, 33, 143–44 Catholic, 94–98, 100–102
see also Anterior Austria; Joseph deist, 108–11
II, Holy Roman Emperor; neologist, 105–8
Maria Theresa, empress of Protestant Orthodox, 111–12
Austria; Vienna; Vorarlberg bibliography, history of, 136–38
bishoprics, effect of Reformation
Baader, Ferdinand Maria, 146 on, 159 n. 7
Bamberg, 61 bishops, Gassner’s support among,
Bamberg, bishop of, 37–38, 57 163 n. 35
Bamberg, University of, 94 Bludenz, 61
Baruffaldi, Girolamo, 56 Boie, Heinrich Christian, 123
Basel, 107 Bonnet, Johann Carl, 113
211
INDEX
Blumhardt, Johann Christoph, 147 counter-Enlightenment, 2, 4, 19,

book publishing, history, 120–24, 31, 83–85, 111–17, 145–
197 n. 10, 202 n. 60 48
Bourgeois, Abbot, 71–72 Csordas, Thomas, 84–85
Bourges, Pragmatic Sanction of
(1438), 40 daimōn, meaning of, 90–92, 107
Braunschweig, duchy of, 33 Dalaas, 12
Braz, 12 debate, rules for, 119–20, 125–30,
Bremen, 130 141–42
Brixen (Bressanone), bishop of, 38 deists, 108–11
Brognolo, Candidus, 56, 96, 166 n. Delrio, Martin, S. J., 99
57 demonic possession
Buckley, F. H., 138, 141 Biblical examples of, 89, 92–93,
Butler, Samuel, 133 99, 106–16
canonical signs of, 89
Capuchins, 43 celebrated cases of, 175 n. 2
Carlyle, Thomas, 141 English debate on, 106–7
Catholic ecclesiastical administra- fraud and, 97
tion, 34–42 natural explanations of, 50, 55,
maps of, 34–37 90, 93, 106–12
Catholic ecclesiastical principali- proofs of, 85
ties, 34, 36–37 symptoms of, 1, 4, 11, 13–14,
charismatic healing, 7, 105 54–55, 61–64, 70–81
Chur, bishop of, 14, 38, 45, 48, 57 types of, 96, 166–67 n. 57
Cilia, Gelasius de, 56, 166 n. 57 demonology, English debate on,
circumsession, 13–14, 50, 57, 62, 91–92, 179–80 n. 16, 190–92
67–68, 71–72, 81, 96–97, 161 n. 66
n. 21 demons
Clement XIV, pope, 53, 132 disputes about, 24–25, 31
Cohen, Ed, 84 evil and, 17
Coletus, Stephen, 96 image of, 20–21
Colloredo, Hieronymus Joseph as tool for thought, 3, 12–13, 24
Franz de Paula von, arch- demythologizing, 90, 106–11
bishop of Salzburg, 42, 50, see also Biblical criticism;
55–57 demonic possession, natural
Cologne, archbishops of, 37–38 explanations of; neologists
Constance, bishop of, 38–39 Dessau, 88
see also Rodt, Franz Konrad von devil
convulsions, 152 n. 4, 172 n. 29 development of idea of, 114
212
INDEX
as distinct from demon, 107 Eschenmeyer, Adam Carl August

doctrine of, 193 n. 78 von, 146
Gassner’s idea of, 13, 20, 61–65 evil, 16–17, 142
see also daimōn; demonic posses- exorcism
sion; demons canonical, 2
Diderot, Denis, 30 expulsive (expulsivus), 67
Dillingen, University of, 145 as fraud, 132–33
dismissals, of those deemed natu- Gassner’s use of, 1–3, 12, 21, 59
rally ill, 75–81 Jesus’ use of, 3, 28, 76–77
Dorothea Francisca, countess of light (lenitivus), 67
Upper Palatinate-Sulzbach, manuals of, 166 n. 57, 167 n. 59
70, 78 physical explanations of, 67–70
Dresden, 88 Protestant use of, 88
Durich, Fortunat, O. F. M. de success of, 4
Paula, 95 test (exorcismus probativus), 12,
50, 61, 67–68, 99
Ecclesiatical states of Holy Roman see also demonic possession;
Empire, 33–39, 51 Roman Ritual
Eckartshausen, Karl von, 146 experience, history of, 12–13, 24–
Eichstätt, bishopric of, 41, 49 27, 30–31, 142, 151 n. 3
Einbildung, 105, 170 n. 16 eyewitness reports, 3, 72–75, 77,
Elbigenalp, 144 89, 98, 100
Ellenberger, Henri, 6, 19
Ellwangen, 1–2, 27, 43–44, 73 Farmer, Hugh, 106–7, 114–15
Ellwangen, princely provostry of, Febronius, Justinus ( Johann Niko-
14, 38, 41, 49, 53 laus von Hontheim), 39–42, 57
empirical evidence, doubts con- forerunners of, 160 n. 13
cerning, 89 Feldkirch, 61
English demonology, 106–7 Forster, Marc, 43
Enlightenment, 4–8 Foucault, Michel, 25
Catholic, 23, 30–31, 39–44, 69, Frankfurt a. M., 140
95–96 Franklin, Benjamin, 20
German, 22–24, 104–11, 123, fraud, possession as, 65
impact of, 5, 9, 14, 64–65 Frederick William II, king of Prus-
enthusiasm, 7 sia, 147
epilepsy, 1, 62–64, 74 Freedman, Jeffrey, 3
Erdt, Baroness von, 44, 73 Frei, Hans, 93
Ernesti, Johann August, 108, 187– Freiburg, Habsburg administra-
88 n. 52 tion in, 164 n. 38
213
INDEX
Freiburg i. Br., 49 Gruber, Johann Nepomuk, S. J.,

Freising, bishop of, 38, 41, 49 144
Fugger, Anton Ignaz von, bishop Guillotin, Joseph Ignace, 20
of Regensburg, 14–15, 32, 45, Guts-Muths, Johann Christoph,
47–49 136–37
Galvani, Luigi, 19 Habermas, Jürgen, 141

Garve, Christian, 139 Haen, Anton de, 45–46
Gassner, Johann Joseph Hahn, Philipp Matthäus, 102
appearance of, 59–60 Halle, 15, 88
controversy over, 22, 31, 73–75, Hamburg, 88
120–22, 124–26, 130–37, Hanauer, Joseph, 51, 125
139, 141 Hanover, 104
exile, 56 Harris, Ruth, 83
exorcisms of, compared to those Hauffe, Frederike, 146
of gospels, 99 healing, 59–86
exorcisms of, exploited by oth- exorcism and, 104–5
ers, 52 explanations of, 83–86
exorcizing in Ellwangen, 1–2, metaphors and, 84–85
73–75, 81–82 Heiligenberg, counts of, 39
life of, 11–16, 45–51 Hell, Maximilian, S. J., 17–18
imitators of, 165 n. 41 Hersche, Peter, 40
method of, 66–82 Hesse, Otto Justus Basilius, 115
political objections to, 52 historical understanding, 90, 93
Protestant reactions to, 102–16 see also neologists
Regensburg healings of, 75–78 Hohenlohe, 81–82
sources of ideas of, 184 n. 30 Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Karl
Sulzbach healings of, 78–81 Albert von, count of, 48, 51,
writings of, 22, 73 82, 163 n. 37
Gerbert, Martin, prince abbot of Holy Roman Empire, 15, 32–41,
St. Blasien, 51 45, 51–52
Gierl, Martin, 120 ecclesiastical components of,
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 5, 135, 33–39
147 Hontheim, Nikolaus von, see Feb-
Goldgar, Anne, 120, 138 ronius, Justinus
Grassl, Hans, 145–46 Horace, 118–19
Gravamina of the German nation, Hume, David, 30, 193 n. 76
40 humility, as posture, 127–30
Grein, 144 hysteria, 7, 65
214
INDEX
illness, mental, 50 Kerner, Justinus, 146

natural and unnatural, 49, 71– Kindleben, Christian Wilhelm,
72 116
Illuminati, 146, 148 Kircher, Athanasius, S. J., 18
imagination, body and, 105 Kleinman, Arthur, 85
power of, 26, 74 Klemens Wenzeslaus, duke of Sax-
see also Einbildung ony, archbishop of Trier and
Ingolstadt, University of, 20, 44, bishop of Augsburg, 44
162 n. 26 Klösterle, 12, 14, 27, 49, 61
Innsbruck, 12 Kollmann, Jacob Anton, 73
Korn, Christoph Heinrich, 11
James, William, 65 Köster, Heinrich Martin Gott-
Jansenists, 7, 40, 42, 46, 50, 148, fried, 111–16, 128
162 n. 30, 193 n. 76
Jesuits (Society of Jesus), 42–43, Langenegg, 11, 23
96, 100, 132 language, persuasion and, 83
former members of, 1, 15, 28, Lardner, Nathaniel, 110
46, 98–100, 134, 146–48 Latin, use of, 1, 12, 67–68
suppression of, 5, 15, 53 laughter
Jesus, beliefs of, 143 function of, 137–42
Jesus, power of name of, 70, 72 objections to, 205 n. 84
Jews, 90–92, 95, 107, 109–13 tradition of, 205 n. 83
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 5, 15, 23,
15, 17, 30, 32, 41–43, 46–49, 31, 103–4, 116, 118, 135,
133, 139–40 146
journalism, Gassner and, 131–33 correspondence with Semler,
journals, rise of, 122–23 87, 105–6
Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich, 146 religious evolution of, 156 n. 21
Lavoisier, Antoine de, 20
Kant, Immanuel, 147 Leipzig, 88
Karl Eugen, duke of Württem- Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 6,
berg, 32, 134, 135 108–9
Karl Theodor, elector of Bavaria, Leuthner, Johann Nepomuk
41, 148 Anton, 44
Kaunitz, Wenzel Anton von, 45 Linz, bishopric of, 41
Kautz, C. F., 73 Liskow, Christian Ludwig, 133
Kemberg, 88 literacy, German, 120
Kempten, imperial abbey of, 11, Lohmann, Anna Elisabeth, 88–89,
41 91, 106
215
INDEX
Loschert, Oswald, abbot of Ober- Middleton, Conyers, 110

zell, 56–57, 101–2 Migazzi, Christoph Anton, cardi-
Lourdes, 83 nal archbishop of Vienna, 46–
Loyola, Ignatius of, 100 48
Ludwig Eugen, duke of Württem- miracles, 28–31, 46–47, 49–50,
berg, 32, 51, 82 83–86, 90, 99, 105–11
Lutherans, 23, 68, 87, 89, 100, debate on, 181 n. 18, 193 n. 76
102, 111, 120, 137 Jesus’, 90–93, 96–99, 106, 109–
10
McGann, Jerome, 105 Montafon, 61
Maffei, Scipione, 96 Montgelas, Maximilian von, count,
magnetism, 19–20, 68, 74, 100 148
Mainz, archbishop of, 38 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 18
maleficium (harmful magic), 98, Müller, Gottlieb, 88–89
101 Munich, 2, 41, 44, 61, 73
Maria Bernardina, countess Muratori, Ludovico Antonio, 26,
(Truchsess von Wolfegg and 54, 96
Friedberg), 14, 41
Maria Renata Singer, 8–9, 56, 101 Neiman, Susan, 16–17
Maria Theresa, empress of Austria, neologists, 3, 87, 93, 100, 106–8,
5, 42, 45, 47–49, 53–56, 163 117
n. 32 Neuenstein, 61
Maximilian III Joseph, elector of Nicolai, Friedrich, 113, 123, 131,
Bavaria, 17–18, 32, 44, 73, 135–37, 139–40, 143–44
130 informants of, 204 n. 74
Mayer, Andreas Ulrich (‘‘Blocks- Niederkirchen, 113
berger’’), 73 nobility, as supporters of Gassner,
Mede, Joseph, 90 14–15, 48, 70, 81–82
Mejer, Luise, 124 nunciatures, papal, 39–41
melancholy, cure of, 173 n. 31
Memmingen, 11 Oberzell, 56, 101
Menghi, Girolamo, 56, 96 Oetinger, Freidrich Christoph,
mental illness, Gassner’s inability 102–3
to heal, 75 Offenburg, 45
Merz (März), Alois, S. J., 74–75, Old Testament, exorcism and, 177
81, 98–100, 132, 186 n. 36 n. 7
Mesmer, Franz Anton, 2, 6, 17–20, Osterwald, Peter von, 18
23, 53, 59, 105, 146 Öttingen-Wallerstein, princes of,
mesmerism, 146, 148 53
216
INDEX
Palatinate, electorate of, 113 Regensburg, 15, 18, 27, 44–45

Passau, bishop of, 38 reports of Gassner’s cures in,
Pentecostalism, 147 75–78
persuasion, 66–67, 72, 86 Regensburg, bishop of, 37, 41, 49,
physicians, consultation of, 63 57
Pietism, 102–4, 146–47 see also Fugger, Anton Ignaz von
Pitzer, Volker, 40 Reichle, Anton, 56
Pius VI, pope, 16, 32, 41, 51, 57, Reichskirche (imperial church), 37–
81 42
placebo response, 3, 84–86, 174 n. compared with Spanish church,
37, 175 n. 44 158 n. 5
Poland, 5, 33 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 6,
Pondorf, 16 108–11
possession, see demonic possession revival, religious, 2, 7, 31, 48, 51
postmodernism, 25 ridicule, 118–42
praecepta (lessons or admonitions), Ried, Freiherr von, 45
13, 57, 67 Rochow, Eberhard von, 123
Prague, 12, 128 Rodt, Franz Konrad von, cardinal
Prague, archbishop of, 16, 32, 38, prince bishop of Constance,
55 32, 39, 41, 43, 49, 66
Premonstratensians, 8–9 Roman Ritual (Rituale Romanum)
Prichovic, Antonín Petr, arch- of 1614, 23–24, 29, 49–50,
bishop of Prague, 42, 49–50, 57, 59, 83, 89, 96–97, 168
56 n. 1
Protestants, pilgrims to Gassner, Romanticism, 145–46
23, 55–56, 68, 99 Rosenfeld, Sophie, 125
Prussia, 5, 33, 144 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 16, 133
pseudonyms, see anonymity Royal Academy of Sciences,
psychotherapy, exorcism and, 169 French, 20
n. 9 Runge, Conrad H., 114, 130
public, appeals to, 140
public sphere, history of, 8, 140– Sailer, Johann Michael, S. J., 146
42, 150–51 n. 8 St. Anthony, 105
St. John, knights of, 38
Rabner, Gottlieb Wilhelm, 133 Saint-Martin, Louis Claude de,
reading, history of, 124 146
Reform, Catholic, 40–43, 46–47, St. Pölten, bishopric of, 41
50, 95–96 St. Vitus’ dance, 1
see also Enlightenment, Catholic Salem (Upper Swabia), 14, 39, 41
217
INDEX
Salzburg, archbishop of, 16, 32, Sprezzi (Spretti), count von, 43

38, 55–56 Steinböckin, Johanna, 144
see also Colloredo, Hieronymus Sternbach, baron von, governor of
Joseph Franz de Paula von Vorarlberg, 45, 49
Sartori, Joseph Edler von, 53–55, Sterzinger, Don Ferdinand, O.
140, 165 n. 50 Theat., 2, 15, 43, 49, 53, 73,
satire, German, 196 n. 1 96–97, 128–30, 134
Saxony, 33 on demonic possession, 100
Schleis, Bernhard Joseph, von image of, 69
Löwenfeld, 70–71, 78, 129 on witchcraft, 94–95
Schlözer, August Ludwig, 123 Stoiber, Ubaldus, 56, 96
Schmid, Franz Joseph, 145 Strasbourg, bishop of, 38
Schönborn dynasty, 37 suggestion, healing and, 85
Schubart, Christian Friedrich see also persuasion; placebo
Daniel, 123, 129, 131–36, 202 response
n. 64 Sulzbach, 15, 27, 54, 146
Schwab, Anselm, prince abbot of Sunstein, Cass, 141
Salem, 39 superstitions, 31, 41, 45, 47, 55,
Schwägelin, Maria Anna, 8, 11, 23 66, 90–91, 93–94, 96, 107–
Scripture, historical understanding 17, 145
of, 92–94, 100, 106–8 Swabia, ecclesiastical organization
see also historical understanding; of, 36–37
neologists Swabian-Franconian Circle, 45
Seefeld, 144–45 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 115
Seiler, Georg Friedrich, 87 Swieten, Gerhard van, 46
Semler, Johann Salomo, 15, 117 Swieten, Gottfried van, 45
on demonic possession, 87, 89– Swift, Jonathan, 133
91 Switzerland, 61
and Lavater, 105–6 Sykes, Arthur Ashley, 91, 107, 110
and Lohmann, Anna Elisabeth, sympathy, 3, 126, 135, 146
106
on Scripture, 92–94, 100–101 Tannen, Deborah, 141
sensibility, cult of, 105 Tartarotti, Girolamo, 95–96
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Taves, Ann, 65
Cooper, Third Earl of, 118– Teller, Wilhelm Abraham, 113
19 Teutonic knights, 38
Simon, Jordan, O. S. A., 73, 96 Thyraeus, Petrus, S. J., 99
Singer, Maria Renata, 8–9, 56, 101 Trier, archbishop of, 38
Sonnenfels, Aloys Wiener von, 95 see also Febronius, Justinus;
218
INDEX
Klemens Wenzeslaus, duke of ideas of, 9, 69, 73

Saxony suspicions of, 8, 24
Tyrol, 61, 144–45 trials, 1, 11, 13, 23, 26, 53, 56,
87–88, 97–98, 100
Überlingen, 39 ‘‘witchcraft war,’’ Bavarian, 6–7,
Ulm, 123 15, 73, 94–95, 100, 183 n. 24
Unterzell, 56 Wittelsbach dynasty, 37
Upper Palatinate, 15 Wittenberg, 88
Upper Swabia, 14, 43, 49 Wolfegg, 14
see also Maria Bernardina,
Vienna, 17–18, 45–48, 95 countess
Concordat of (1448), 40 Wolfenbüttel, 109
demon posssession in, 163 n. 32 Wolff, Christian, 95
Vienna, archbishop of, 38, 46–48 Wolter, Johann Anton von, 44, 73
Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet Württemberg, 145
de, 16, 30, 133, 135, 141 Würzburg, 8
Vorarlberg, 2, 12, 14, 45, 49 Würzburg, bishop of, 9, 37–38
Würzburg, university of, 94
Wagstaff, John, 114
Walker, Mack, 32–33 Zapf, Georg Wilhelm, 66, 129,
Warburton, William, bishop of 136
Gloucester, 114 Zedler, Johann Heinrich, 89
Weber, Joseph, 145 Zeiler, Johann Georg, 135
Weber, Max, 27 Zeiller, Johann Jacob, 144
Wettstein, Johann Jacob, 107–8 Zimmermann, Johann Georg,
Wieland, Christoph Martin, 123 103–4, 188 n. 61
witchcraft Zurich, 103
219

Exorcism and Enlightenment Johann Joseph Gassner and The Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (The Terry Lectures Series) by H. C. Erik Midelfort

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Exorcism and Enlightenment Johann Joseph Gassner and The Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (The Terry Lectures Series) by H. C. Erik Midelfort

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the terry lectures

EXORCISM AND ENLIGHTENMENT

The Courage to Be Paul Tillich

Exorcism and Enlightenment

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ≤ NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Janson OS type by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for perma-

The deed of gift declares that ‘‘the object of this

1 The Experience of Demons 11

2 A Niche in the Incubator: Ecclesiastical

5 Conversation and Ridicule 118

encourage me to take on Gassner, and I only regret that this book

Hohenlohe in Neuenstein, the episcopal Ordinariatsarchiv in Re-

In December of 1774 wonders were reported in the little Fran-

an exorcism of their own, trying to banish the demons of baroque

European Enlightenment, the celebrity of a German Catholic exor-

suicides; in the same year Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published anon-

something substantial about the growth of the ‘‘public sphere’’ during

to reform or deny traditional biblical doctrines concerning the physi-

of understanding and shaping one’s experience and religion. In pro-

Gassner’s Healing Career

Hundreds of patients came to Gassner for relief, but he did not

or learned, although Gassner did deploy this last symptom in one of

Regensburg; the archbishops of Prague and Salzburg issued pastoral

The Problem of Evil

How shall we understand what Gassner was doing? He was treating

By the middle of the eighteenth century it was beginning to seem

Franz Anton Mesmer as Rival

Mesmer (1734–1815) had discovered in 1774 that he could manipu-

dressing. Henri Ellenberger has pointed to this collision of religious

Mesmer and Gassner

Mesmer did not long confine himself to South German back-

England and France were eagerly pursuing a program of research

(opposite page) Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779) casting out a demon,

Understanding the German Enlightenment

How shall we understand this strange controversy? For one thing,

presses at a rate that no one had previously experienced, and new

cases of demonic possession were the result of bewitchment, so that

Thinking with Demons: The Grounds of Experience

just conceptually distinct, for it is also true that many conceptual

The Enchanted World

compassionate glance. Sharing part of this worldview were many of

that we cannot tell if an amazing event actually breaches the rules of

The Meanings of Experience

These various views expressed in the late eighteenth century cre-

Johann Joseph Gassner found himself and his religious movement

one or another powerful patron-state, the empire functioned to keep

(opposite page) Map 1. Catholic Ecclesiastical Administration of Central

(Opposite page) Map 2. Ecclesiastical Principalities in the Southern Holy

fellow prelates in France, Italy, or Spain. Many were grand secular

‘‘Justinus Febronius,’’ the pseudonym of Johann Nikolaus von Hont-

Gallican or episcopalist ideas to the task of curbing the papal nuncia-

Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo of Salzburg and Antonín Petr

Gassner had encountered skeptical lay administrators before, start-

the son of a previous imperial physician, Gerhard van Swieten. The

also opposed what he saw as ‘‘superstition.’’ In June of 1758 he had

In support of his petition, he claimed that he (Fugger) and four other

had performed in his lifetime and would spread an unjustified fear

both Gassner’s supporters and his opponents appealed to the curia to

waxed indignant at the amount of specie being exported to Ellwangen

Salzburg, Abbot Loschert produced a remarkable argument. How